One Time at Porn Camp...

I spent last weekend at the Circlet Press Editorial Retreat, also known as #porncamp. I like the name because it embraces the sexuality we're trying to celebrate. At the same time, I don't think it accurately represents how deep things get there. I have a master's degree in writing, and I've been to all sorts of conferences and classes, and I've never been to any event or class with as high a degree of really useful information and activities as #porncamp. Here are some impressions of the whirlwind:

Making:

I got to see a proof of the print edition of my anthology MakerSex: Erotic Stories of Geeks, Hackers, and DIY Projects. (Ebook edition is available now, and the print edition is on its way!)



Speaking:

We recorded a podcast of a live reading with Nobilis Erotica (you can hear me last, reading from my genderqueer science fiction story "Always the Same, Always Changed", which you can hear in full in The Sexy Librarian's Dirty 30).

Learning:

Laura Antoniou, writer of the Marketplace series clued us in on tips for writing and sustaining a series. I've always wanted to try writing one, so I was glad to learn from a master. Cecilia Tan also shared insights about serials, which is another form I've been curious about, and that wasn't covered in my formal writing education.

Sharing:

Social media is hard for me. I genuinely like talking to people, but maintaining that day after day online takes a sort of energy and attention that I often feel I can't afford—too often, it seems it would come at the expense of my writing or my significant personal relationships. So much talking about social media in writerly contexts is about shame and endless to-do lists. I really appreciate that at the Circlet Retreats we've talked about it with more attention to pragmatism, personality, authenticity, and emotional needs. Last year, we talked a lot about depression and social media. This year, Avery Vanderlyle came up with some great ideas for how writers can support each other while being social. I'm really looking forward to working with her and Artemis Savory on allowing a bit more of myself to live online. Also, Artemis and Avery are wonderful. This post wouldn't exist without them, so it's already working!

Discussing:

I moderated a panel on safer sex in speculative fiction worlds. I've said for a while that I prefer contemporary erotica stories to include safer sex because there's a lot of characterization that one sees in how those discussions, negotiations, and practices are handled. There is an ease to handwaving those issues away in speculative fiction, but I think that leaves a fair bit of world-building on the table, and denies a chance to get to know more about who's in the story. This could be a giant post in its own right, but I framed some categories for us to talk about, and then enjoyed what Circlet authors and editors had to say about them.

In no particular order, I think consider safer sex in specfic could produce really interesting details about barrier types (psychic as well as physical? something else?), negotiation techniques (verbal/nonverbal? ritual? etc), cultural beliefs (matching science or not? consistent across cultures?), consequences (complex, definitely), and opportunities for display of trust and intimacy. These are all really cool things to think about when designing other worlds. I want to spend more time sinking into these ideas, either in story or post form.

(I'm thinking a lot about safer sex lately—don't forget that I'm currently looking for submissions for Positively Sexy, which will feature erotic stories about characters who have STIs.)

Playing:

I finally, finally got to play Slash: The Game, which I've heard about every year at #porncamp. I'm still thinking about Barbarella paired with Morticia Addams, and Mr. Spock finding love with Castiel.

Writing:

And last but not least, Circlet's publisher Cecilia Tan never lets us get away without writing something new, so I have the beginnings of a lesbian robot story that I'm going to be finishing up in the next few days. Here's a taste:

"Fuck them," I said, as I began to fuck her. "It's not our fault they fucked up the programming. I don't give a fuck if they die because we're off mission."

If they'd wanted us to act rationally, they shouldn't have made us so human. They shouldn't have given her the capacity to get so gloriously wet, to squeeze my finger with such taut muscularity. They shouldn't have connected my here endings with such complexity, shouldn't have let my body sympathize with hers so well, shouldn't have made me so I shivered at the base of my spine at the effort of working my fingers deeper into her tightening cunt.

So that starts my afternoon off right. Having participated in the group activities, it's just about time for me to head back to my bunk ;)

On Not Being Perfect

(This post is part of my series: An Aversion to Marketing with a Fear of Bleeding)

I think I've blogged consistently enough over the past couple weeks that I can talk about a recent blogging embarrassment without feeling too much like a fool. I had been on a roll, posting every day, and I was into this deep exploration of what blogging is all about, and thinking a lot about how I want to do it. I did a post called "The Rewards of Consistency," and then... radio silence. For, like, two weeks. I've had blogging lapses before, but rarely with such irony.

So intense was my sheepishness that it was hard to get back on the horse. But I want to talk a minute about how I did, because I think it's important.

In my writing about what I think is good blogging and what I want my blog to be, I've criticized treating it like a news feed. I figure no one is interested enough in me to simply want to read a long string of announcements about what I've been writing lately. But what kind of post did I use to get back in the swing? Exactly that kind. It's easy, it's fast, and it gave me an easy way to put some text between myself and that embarrassing post on consistency.

This is a key to writing, of all kinds. Sometimes, you screw up. You write something that embarrasses you. Or you spend a week writing and deleting the word "the." At that point, when you're in danger of going dark, you have to do whatever it takes to get going again, and it doesn't matter at all whether it matches your ideal.

If you've had writer's block for six months and all you can get yourself to write is a comic book script, then I hope you've got storyboard paper. I've let projects die altogether because I couldn't maintain progress on them up to my standards. Would I like to blog every single day, reap the rewards of consistency, and make every post incredibly thoughtful in the process? Of course I would. But that's not real life.

Real life is like a balance beam. You wobble. And if you have to use tricks to stay on, you do.

The Rewards of Consistency

(This post is part of my series: An Aversion to Marketing with a Fear of Bleeding)

My last post discussed the benefits and pitfalls of expecting yourself to blog on a schedule. But I need to address the question of why a person should blog on a schedule at all. Why not just post whenever you have something astounding to say?

There are a few reasons. I'll start with the personal ones, and close with professional ones.

If I waited to post until I was ready to knock everyone's socks off, then I'll spend the next six months tinkering with my attempt at the perfect blog post and never say anything at all. I might just drop off the face of the earth. This is the same reason I can't wait to write stories until I'm totally inspired.

There's also something to be said for habit — if I know I'm writing a post daily, or whatever my habit is, then I'll stay alert to what's around me or what's striking my passion. For example, when I hear myself talking in a certain tone of voice, I detect the passion and force of my opinion and think, "I should write about that." Without a regular habit of blogging (as with any other type of writing habit), these ideas will simply get lost, or go on a long to-do list that I will never actually get to.

(However, as I discussed yesterday, neither of these reasons justifies me writing posts by simply manufacturing something to say. I don't send out every story I write — some just aren't good. Blogging, like all writing, requires some ability to assess the quality of what I'm producing, and the level of interest it's likely to inspire in others).

Now for the professional reasons, because consistency truly seems to have rewards.

As a reader, if I'm really excited about a writer I just discovered, and then I visit that person's blog and see that their last post was in November 2005, I get disappointed. I want to know what that person is thinking about now or recently, and it gives me a thrill to see that there's a way to get into conversation with him or her. That's anecdotal, but intuition tells me it's probably true more generally. If someone gets to a blog and it looks uninhabited, that reader is more likely to write that site off than to keep checking up.

Because I never know when that magical excited reader is going to pop in (hopefully, any day now...), I have to keep my blog looking fresh. This is a basic housekeeping principle moved into blogging — I don't let the house go to utter chaos, because I want to be at least somewhat prepared if I have a sudden guest.

But then there is the matter of traffic. I have had other blogs, under my real name, and I spent some years working for a magazine. I always felt skeptical about the claim that we needed more content to get more traffic. To some extent, I could see that more posts would mean more page views, but I also wondered if that would lead to diminishing returns. As an individual, there's only so much I can read, and I'm sometimes turned off by sites that seem "too busy."

In this case, though, I'm going to rule against my personal experience. So long as you're not talking drivel, people who post frequently and regularly seem to be rewarded with increased audience. When my magazine began to do it, we saw a huge jump in our audience. When I blogged daily under my real name, I had a jump in traffic that was not explained merely by the increased frequency — the effect was multiplicative. Places like The Huffington Post are masters of this principle, though I don't agree with all of their methods.

So, in this case, I conclude that it's good to have a blogging schedule, both because of the rewards of consistency, and because of the benefits I discussed in my post on taking a stab. The key is to keep that from becoming the mindless production of empty content.

I've tried schedules such as Monday - Wednesday - Friday, but my observation has always been that posting daily brings me the best results, both in terms of the personal reasons I gave and in terms of the professional reasons.

See the other posts in this series here.

Taking a Stab vs Manufacturing Something to Say

(This post is part of my series: An Aversion to Marketing with a Fear of Bleeding)

Bloggers, particularly those doing it for professional reasons, are under a lot of pressure to "produce content" — whatever that means. There's the idea that it's important to post consistently, whether that's daily or weekly or some other schedule.

I've seen a lot of encouragement to "just write something." I think that's good advice, but it needs to be balanced the right way. It needs to be about taking a stab, rather than manufacturing something to say.

Here's an example of taking a stab:

If you were to read my whole archive, you'd notice that I've made several mentions of nonconsensual erotica. This is a subject I'm interested in, have a lot of strong feelings about, and would like to talk about more on this blog. However, I get nervous because I worry about getting it wrong. It's a complex topic that's volatile, and I feel there's a real risk of losing people forever if I'm not careful about how I structure what I say. A couple weeks ago, I spent most of an afternoon trying to compose a blog post on this subject, but got really bogged down trying to be crystal clear about everything and cover all the bases in that one post.

That's really never going to work. I'll stay stuck in fear forever if I don't take a stab and do my best at expressing a small piece of what I have to say. I'm not going to be careless, but in this case, it's better, I think, to say something about a subject I care about than choosing the alternative, which is to remain forever silent about a subject I care about because I'm not sure I can do it perfectly.

For things like this, blog schedules can be really helpful, because they push me to keep working at a subject and writing about it. Otherwise, I might start a super-long essay that's going to stay hidden on my computer forever because I'm nervous about it.

Manufacturing something to say is very different, and I think it's the shadow side of having a blog schedule. Here's an example:

Opinions take time, and sometimes I don't want to invest the time in developing a smart opinion. I just want to write a post in 10 minutes and check the box that I did this. Better yet, how about getting several days ahead? I, personally, am too nervous to throw opinions around in a situation like this because I'm afraid of being held to something I don't really want to believe. When I want to manufacture content, that's usually when I pull out the inane news posts and promo attempts.

Now I'm not saying all news and promo is bad. But I'm pretty sure it's not what people want to read. A person might put up with a bit of it if it occurs between thoughtful posts, but I have, as a reader, stopped my subscriptions to blogs that were too full of these. I just don't care about this stuff unless the writer gives me a reason to care by nestling it in the middle of truly substantive writing.

Recently, I came to the painful conclusion that manufacturing content is a waste of time. It just detracts from my blog and makes it boring to visitors.

I've seen other things that I suspect of being attempts to manufacture content. I've seen writers come up with a great headline and a few sentences of an interesting premise. Then they abandon that thought and go straight into an excerpt of their latest book. This is the worst, I think, because it disrespects both reader and writer. I really don't want to click on a post that I think is going to be about gay marriage rights or some similar weighty subject only to discover that the author hasn't put in the time.

So, to summarize, I think a blog schedule can be good if it pushes me to take a stab at a weighty subject I care about, particularly over time. This will help me to hone my thoughts and hopefully connect me to others interested in the same topic. On the other hand, a blog schedule is bad if it encourages me to dilute my good, passionate writing with fluff that I couldn't reasonably expect anyone to read.

See the other posts in this series here.

An Aversion to Marketing with a Fear of Bleeding

A lot of people, myself included, blog because they're writers, and these days a blog is pretty much an obligation for a writer. Though you see the occasional article reminding you that some authors sell books just fine without participating in social media, there is a powerful sense that you absolutely must participate in social media or no one will buy your books. Ever.

Great. So you're a writer, and now you have a blog. What do you do with it? The obvious thing is to post news of whatever you're publishing. This makes your blog sort of a brochure. If someone reads one of your stories somewhere and wants to know more about you, that person can come to your blog and find out more. This reader can see what you've been up to and then maybe check out some of your other work.

I am sure this happens occasionally. I, in fact, often check out other people's blogs that way. But if you are not as famous as Neil Gaiman, there is probably no one besides your partner and your best friend — if you're lucky — who hangs breathlessly on your every blog post, just dying to hear more about what you've been working on lately.

This brings up a few questions. Can you grab those people who sometimes check you out and maybe keep them? Is there something you can do or say that will increase their interest in what you're working on? Also, can you "build an audience?" In other words, can you start to gather a group of people who are interested in what you say and what you are working on lately?

This is where I think it breaks down for many people. Writers are being flogged with the notion that they need to "build audience." And that they can somehow use social media for that. I'm a writer, so I know.

But I'm also a reader, and I can tell you that many writers I'm interested in manage to turn me off with the way they use social media to build audience, reducing my interest rather than increasing it. And I think I might be guilty, too.

Here's the thing: Maybe you can be a stone cold marketer and use those guides to social media to build audience. If so, you probably shouldn't be reading this. But I'm someone who wants to build audience — translated back into real people talk, I mean, I want people to read my blog — but I have an aversion to marketing. I feel like real people, the readers I want, can smell marketing and will avoid it like the plague. I know I do. I have stopped following many blogs because they seemed like nothing more than self-serving news feeds.

So I asked myself what I like as a reader. What makes me more interested in a blog, rather than less?

It turns out to be the same thing I like in any writing. It's when the author bleeds on the page. When the author is passionate, surprising. I'm engaged if they're engaging. I don't want to read transparent attempts to sell your book. I want to know what made you mad as hell, and what you love. I want you to teach me something. It's a tall order. But if you win me over that way, I'll follow you far. I'll buy your work and click your links and go like your stuff on Facebook and whatever stuff like that you want me to do.

So, you know, a really tough step one, and then you'll have me in the palm of your hand for all the steps after that.

Can I do that as a writer? If the only blogs I like are the ones where the author bleeds on the page, can I follow suit?

That's hard. I fear bleeding. I do it slowly. I do it with lots of revisions. When I write stories, I absolutely bleed on the page. I never wanted to do it anywhere else. I never wanted to do it in front of people. And while I stand by what I write in my stories, I have a real fear of revealing my real self on my blog, my real opinions, my true voice. What if I come out and say something I only hinted at in a story, and as a result someone decides she hates me and won't buy my book? That's only the beginning of my fear.

I think that blogging has a lot of elements that amplify this sort of fear. The system of reward and punishment makes it hard to be brave about bleeding on the page. That's something I plan to explore in upcoming posts.

But the title of this post is my rough title for this series: An Aversion to Marketing with a Fear of Bleeding. That's a statement of the problem I'm trying to solve.

Warning: Blog Rant Approaching

A few mornings ago, I felt profoundly disrespected as a reader. I frequently click links I see on Twitter, and I followed a series of links different people shared that led to blog posts that were vapid, transparent attempts at self-promotion — basically a complete waste of my time.

There's no shortage of vapid self-promotion on the Internet. What got me was that these links were not obviously in this class. They seemed to be earnest — failed — attempts to produce something people might want to read. The links came from people who hadn't written the posts themselves, maybe motivated by the desire to help fellow writers out.

I felt really annoyed, because in all cases, the posts started with a premise I was interested in, but then avoided saying anything new or courageous and devolved into self-promotion. I am pretty sure that, in one post, the author made numerous factual errors. People are wrong on the Internet all the time, of course, but this time I couldn't let it go.

As I thought about it over the next several days, I realized I was so annoyed because as I pointed my finger at these posts — which to me were sordid examples of disrespecting the reader in an effort to sell something — three fingers pointed back at me.

Is every post I write about something I believe in and care about? Something I care about people reading? Do I sometimes try to just feed the beast, writing posts just to write them? Am I treating my own readers well — both actual and hypothetical readers? Am I wasting my own time by producing vapid copy that no one would ever care enough to read, or that, worse, would disappoint anyone who tried?

Soon, I found myself making furious notes about the things I was thinking about.

I didn't want to write a bunch of posts about blogging. It's too meta, I told myself. I'm supposed to be using this blog to write about sex. But after generating a list of ideas two pages long, I was reminded of something all sex writers know: passion is a force to be reckoned with. I'm going to go with the rant, and if the notes I've made are any indication, it may go on a while.

There are three categories of posts I want to write about this:

-- Expressing outrage about common blogging "wisdom" that I believe is terribly detrimental
-- Asking what sort of writing is interesting and valuable to both writer and reader
-- Making these things specific by setting directions for this blog

Ultimately, what I want is to make this site more interesting, both to write and to visit.

I've asked myself whether a series of posts on blogging is the most useful way to go about achieving this goal, but this has become a case of "the only way out is through." I'm asking myself these questions all the time, and I think that if I don't want to end up taking a long, possibly permanent hiatus, I'm going to have to turn toward the blog rather than away from it and use it to explore the things I'm thinking about.

Really, these questions could apply to any type of writing. One thing I'm sure of is that a person should only blog about things he or she cares about, and writing is something I care about deeply. Here's hoping that by getting this rant off my chest, I end up improving this site and possibly even helping others get more out of what they're doing.