Thoughts on the Bristol Erotic Meet

This post originally on the fabulous Erotic Meet website.



So it turns out that local legend has it that there is real human skin on the door of The Hatchet. Many thanks to Lucy Felthouse for pointing out that slightly grim bit of history.

Annie has already done a fabulous job of summarising what went on at the recent Bristol Erotic Meet, so I shall point you at her rather than rehash what she's said. I’m just adding a few points about what I got out of the meet.

It was really great spending the evening with Annie, Erotic Moonbeam and Smut Muppet as we're all coming at erotica from different angles. I spend a lot of time thinking about writer craft and publishing these days and it was really good to discuss those themes. I imagine I shall ask the same questions at the London meet as I don't tire of talking about these subjects! We talked about other stuff too (such as website coding and honesty when reviewing work by other people) but these are the things that stood out to be as particularly interesting:

Fiction vs Real Life: A reader doesn't know whether what you're writing did or didn't happen. Which is quite freeing, as it means you can write whatever is in your head, real or otherwise.

Professionalism vs Enthusiasm
Lots of people write erotica simply because they want to, and other people write it because they want to make money out of it. There is nothing wrong with either camp, but the attitude that goes behind each camp is different. What bothers me is there is generally no way of telling between one and the other when you're buying fiction until you start reading.

I left feeling rather patted on the back in many ways. It's nice to bounce ideas off other people and find that you've been going in the right direction all along. Especially when the company is so attractive. ;)

It was really good of Annie to come all the way over for the meet and there had been a lot of interest so the number of people that turned up was a little disappointing. I guess it's still early days for the Bristol meet and I hope we'll have lots more fabulous people at the next one.

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Lessons in "Oh." (A Review)

I bought “Lessons in 'O' : Deep Throating /Oral Sex / Three Some/ Lesbian” by Gemma Parkes from the Amazon.co.uk Kindle store because Parkes tweeted that it is number 17 in Best Female Erotica 2011 list and I presumed this was based on sales. I realise now it was just a list by someone on Amazon. A lesson for me in more careful purchasing. There aren't any reviews for this particular piece but there are reviews of other works by same author and they're generally quite good so I presumed this would be alright.

I bought it, despite the fact that the tag words are in the title, and “threesome” is left as two words rather than combined into one. I bought it despite there being no front cover, so to speak, just a slightly odd CGI image of a pair of lips which looks like it wasn't actually rendered, it was lifted straight from a work in progress on a 3D modelling package.

My second impression was about as great as my first. The formatting was annoying – I had to turn the font size down because it was enormous. There are no proper line breaks or tabs for new paragraphs. There's a serious lack of punctuation right from the off. I was at this point feeling distinctly disappointed. I make no secret that I've not read a lot of erotica lately that I've enjoyed, but I still wilt a little when I try someone new that doesn't raise my expectations. Looking over the comments I've written already I'm wondering why I still went ahead and I bought it. I didn't want (perhaps unwisely) to judge the book by it's cover.

The premise is... bizarre (slightly creepy, I thought), but gets points for being original. Ellie's guy would like her to read his ex-girlfriend's book about oral sex in order to become better at it. Being a good girlfriend, Ellie does try it – and then invites the author/ex-girlfriend over, and lesbian antics ensue.

There's a lot of quite well written sex and it's quite light hearted, but that was about it, really. The dialogue is very clunky and made me cringe more often than relate to the characters. The ex-girlfriend is painted as intensely irritating (and a bit mentally imbalanced, if I'm honest) and I found myself wondering what Ellie was doing with her. There was no “Three Some”. Overall I felt it was confused, with the issues overshadowing the occasional glimpses of potential brilliance. Nothing that a few solid edits couldn't fix, perhaps, but not ready to be in the Kindle store yet, even at £0.86.

Conclusion: Not without merit, but not worth paying for. 2 out of 5 stars.

In the interest of constructive criticism, here are some (hopefully) helpful comments:

• First impressions are incredibly important. It's unfortunate that many readers will judge your book by it's cover but it's the truth. Make sure that your work looks professional from the outside.
• Please, please, PLEASE get someone with a decent grasp of grammar to check over your work before you publish it.
  
• Check that your work is properly formatted for the medium you're selling it for. If you don't have a Kindle, find someone who does. Your reader will thank you.
  
• I don't like to judge an author based on one piece of work, but many readers will do just that. You could be selling hundreds of other stories but work like this may well be putting off many more “come back” readers that you would otherwise be attracting. It pays to get it right all the time. This leads me to....
  
• ...if you go back to a story like this and realise that it is letting your other work down, take it out of circulation and fix it. Don't just leave it there like a bad smell.

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On Editing (Or Not)

As a disclaimer: I don't really want to offend or upset anyone with this blog, but given the perhaps sensitive nature of the content, I guess it might be taken as a personal dig at various people. It's really not. Also, I appreciate I’m setting myself up to be a hypocrite. I’m not perfect and neither is anyone else and that's not the end of the world. I’m mainly asking for a bit more vigilance on this matter.

I’ve just sat down to write a review of Alice by Selena Kitt, and you know what? I can only think about one thing. A characters name is misspelled twice on page one. This was at first confusing, and then so annoying I nearly stopped reading the story there and then. How could someone have published something with such an obvious mistake so early on? I had however paid for it, and it seemed a waste of my money to stop reading it, so I persevered. My expectations of the rest of the story has bottomed out. I thought “if she can't spend the time making sure her characters names are spelled right, why should I assume she expended any effort making sure the story is any good, or the grammar is understandable?”

See, you laughed at that, didn't you?

In fairness to Ms Kitt, Alice is an excellent story once I got beyond that, and I promise not to overdo this gripe again in my review. But the point stands that rather than going on and on about great the story is, I’m sat here ranting about the spelling. Is that really what you want your work to be remembered for?

I’ve come across a lot of poor editing in recent months, and it's really starting to get to me. Before I read erotica I think perhaps I took editing for granted. You'd come across the odd misspelled word in a book and it'd be funny. But since I began to read erotica, I routinely come across sentences that don't make sense, words spelled incorrectly, and grammar in all the wrong places.

Admittedly, most of the erotica that I read is free, and the quality varies wildly, which is what I expect of self-published fiction and is probably one of the reasons why self publishing is prone to bad press. Lately though, I’ve been buying more erotica from seemingly reputable publishing houses and I’m astounded to find that the issues persist there. It's making it very difficult to know what is and isn't worth buying. Slowly but surely, I am losing my faith in published erotica as a genre worth taking seriously. And that makes me very sad, because I like to think I’m good at what I do and I wouldn't want someone else to dismiss my work off-hand because they'd had bad experiences with other pieces of fiction.

Will somebody please think of the children?!

My most serious issue is with authors that charge for their work because they truly have no excuse. I think it's demeaning to your readers to expect them to pay for mistakes that you could easily have fixed. However, to authors that put their work out for free I say: don't do yourself down by failing to edit properly. Not charging for your work is a poor reason to put out any old rubbish. I recently read a story with a friend of mine which would have been average if it had been edited for grammar and misspellings, but which was truly dismal because the incorrect punctuation made a number of sentences almost unintelligible. Thankfully, we laughed our asses of so it wasn't a wasted time, but I feel for the author as I seriously doubt it was her intention that we mock her story rather than enjoy it. I read a free story by another author which was quite good for content but poor on grammar and I’ve been seriously put off looking at the work they have for sale because I have no reason to expect it's any different.

Perhaps this is a bee in my bonnet because I am a writer and spending my time nit picking my own grammar and spelling is what I'd ultimately like to be paid to do. If, however, this is as widespread an issue as it seems to be, then people need to be standing up and complaining about it until things begin to change. Lets not allow the poor editing of some to ruin the reputation of everyone out there that is writing genuinely fantastic erotica.

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Things I've Learned From Being a Lousy Full Time Writer

Some of you will know that I was made redundant at the end of May, and that I'm going back to university in October. This has left me with a big time gap, and rather than try to get another job, I decided that I wanted to spend the time writing. Writing full time is one of my pipe dreams, and I was looking forward to devoting some time to honing my craft and (hopefully) making a little money.

I was all fired up and excited about getting to spend more time writing, and yet the amount of writing I'm doing doesn't seem to be much greater than it was when I had a full time job. I've achieved some things I'm very proud of, but I'm disappointed that I haven't managed more. I have learned some stuff though, and I thought I'd put down a few of the things I've picked up. (Mainly to remind myself, actually.) Here they are, in no particular order. (I'd like to point out that some of these are not original. I have plagiarised from things I've read, but in a roundabout fashion rather than a quoting word for word. Sorry I can't remember who half of them are.)

Why does anyone do this?

1. Set Targets

I thought about setting myself targets - get a book finished, write 10 short stories, write at least 5000 words a week, that kind of thing. I then didn't set targets. Mistake. My biggest achievement thus far is finishing my first novel, which I managed by setting myself the target of finishing it in June. If I had set more goals, I would have managed more before then.

2. Turn Off Twitter

I can waste hours on social networking, and MSN, and texting, and petting this kitten. In fact, I very rarely achieve anything in a reasonable length of time if I don't turn it all off and make myself ignore all those distractions.

3. Have a Plan

Still learning this one - I'm reading Nail Your Novel by Roz Morris, which I wholeheartedly recommend. It's about making your writing life easier by planning and editing in a controlled fashion. In the last two days I've written 6000 words - basically more than I've managed since last November - because I'm working to a plan of how the story is going to go. I wouldn't say it's actually easy, but it's certainly much easier than anything else I've written for a while.

4. Find Encouraging Friends

Finishing my first novel has been an epic battle. I've been writing for years and yet until last month, I'd never finished a novel. I'm convinced the key to my success is a good friend of mine who poked me every Thursday, week after week, and said "finish your novel." If I ever get it published, I'm dedicating it to him. People who make you write when you don't want to and tell you that you're awesome when you're convinced you suck are a Godsend.

5. Chill Out

Almost as much as under-thinking stuff, I tend to over-think things. I get so wound up in a scene that I will swear at it for hours and not put words down. They just stick in my head and won't go to my fingers. Stop for a bit. Make some tea. Go for a walk. When I've untied all the knots in my head it's much easier to go back and finish something.

6. Get On With It

I don't care that it's hard. Just finish the damn thing, will you? It won't write itself if you sit and complain. Sometimes I just have to sit and slog through something. I hate every word and every minute, but the writing gets done. And it's not usually all that bad, either.

7. Choose Your Battles

Initially I found that I had so many ideas that I couldn't focus on one to write it. I had loads I could think of, but I wasn't achieving anything. Now I have a board on my wall. It has notes on all the things I want to do. I put one or two in the WIP column and try and forget about the rest.

8. Always Carry a Pen

The number of times I've been struck by inspiration at the gym and not been able to write it down and then I've forgotten it. Damn, that's frustrating. Now I have a pad and a pen. I make notes everywhere. They're very useful.

9. Read About Writing

Not more than you write, obviously, but reading about editing and how to structure my time and how to improve my output is already making me a much more effective writer. I've got a long way to go before I'm turning a profit, but I can see the standard of my work has gone up, even in a few months.

10. Try Anything Once

Ah, it always comes down to this. My little mantra for life serves me so well on so many levels... As much I hate the idea of properly writing a plan, or writing in 25 minute stints and taking a break, I've found they really help. I thought being a writer was this fantastic, whimsical thing where I get to do what I like, and it's not. It's bloody hard work. And I'm still not working nearly as hard as I need/want to be. But everything I try makes me a better writer. And it's not all completely unenjoyable. As in everything in life, there are bits I enjoy, and bits I don't. I bet I've barely even started. I've made positive steps though, and when I go back into full time work in October, I know that these things I've learned now will help to output more and better quality writing than I was before. :)

Gosh, this is a long post. Well done if you made it this far. Have a small, slightly green looking monkey. I'm sure he's very friendly. :)

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