I am Hazel Redgate, AKA Portarossa, and I've been a professional smutwriter for nine years. AMA!

How do you strike a balance between writing about specific physical actions and writing about general feelings and emotions that are happening during sex?

It depends on the type of story. It sounds a bit glib, but you just kind of get a feel for how to pace things after a while. (I don't think this is unique to smutwriting, particularly; to take a popular example, you can pull out a Dan Brown novel and see how the focus is different during the more physical chase sequences compared to when he's pulling out one of his speeches about the esoteric meaning of the Burger King logo or whatever-the-fuck. Physical descriptions versus mental descriptions both serve the story in different ways.)

That said, romance tends to be more emotional, veering towards including more sexual and physical details as you get more towards erotica. That's partly because romance readers -- as opposed to erotic romance readers, although the lines blur a lot -- often don't want too much graphic detail, and including it can turn them off. Even in the more erotic side of things, it can vary dramatically depending on what type of mood you're trying to set. (If you're doing a sort of humiliation-based scene, it's going to be very much in the mind; if you're doing a quick fumble-fuck in an airplane bathroom, you're probably going to want something a lot more raw and physical and focused on bodily sensation.)

If something is so hot that you want to stop reading and rub one out, that's great for an erotica story, but it's a bit of a detriment if you're trying to write something more romantic and plot-based.

Just FYI, your proof and website do not work. For one, they throw an SSL error (it looks like your domain just points to tumbler's web servers?), and if you ignore that Tumblr just says the page can't be found.

Oh, piss. I've been futzing with my website this week and I copied the link over from last year's AMA, not realising.

Let me figure something else out. Sorry about that.

EDIT: Fixed with a screenshot of my AuthorCentral page.

On Reddit, I know you as a a highly competent and interesting investingative commenter. Have you considered or done any professional work in that regard?

I love doing the Reddit deep dives... but part of the reason I love them is because it's a hobby, not a job. If I had to do it professionally, I think it would suck a lot of the fun out of it for me.

I'm very lucky in the sense that I love my work, but I still like having something that I can do to just turn off my work-mind and write and research for the sheer pleasure of it.

I have always enjoyed your deep dives! They're always so informative and give me things to think about in ways I probably wouldn't have thought of something, or helps me to better understand something. I have yet to check out your actual work, but please don't stop the dives 😁

I definitely need to check these out.

Beware: Only do so if you have time to spare. Look at her comments and sort by top.

Edit: Look for the posts made to /r/OutOfTheLoop.

And realize that some of those long posts, are just the FIRST in a SERIES of posts in the same thread, because she exceeded the word count on the first one in the series.

The easiest way to find my stuff on there is to check here.

I can be... wordy.

Have you ever given any thought to teaming up with a low-flying satirist and collaborating on a subversive piece of quasi-supernatural erotica that makes commentary on the general state of modern-day entertainment (with a particular focus on how said entertainment affects and influences real-life expectations for romance and relationships)?

As a follow-up question, how do you feel about too-long sentences which aren't actually run-on in nature?

Have you ever given any thought to teaming up with a low-flying satirist and collaborating on a subversive piece of quasi-supernatural erotica that makes commentary on the general state of modern-day entertainment (with a particular focus on how said entertainment affects and influences real-life expectations for romance and relationships)?

Yes.

As a follow-up question, how do you feel about too-long sentences which aren't actually run-on in nature?

Pro.

Without getting too specific, is the money drastically better for this type of writing rather than what you were doing before? Enough to where you can see more “traditional” writers start to change over? I honestly have no idea how popular this industry is.

Also, did you decide immediately to start writing erotica or did you look for other types of writing first?

Thanks for doing this AMA and hopefully this thread doesn’t get out of hand.

I don't know it's better money, but it's certainly more fulfilling. (Keep in mind that I was a very, very junior freelance copywriter when I made the switch, so it wasn't like I was earning big bucks even then; I'm 34 now, so I was only a couple of years out of university when I swapped over.) Ultimately I just decided I wanted to write things that people actually enjoyed, rather than spending the same amount of effort working on material on the inside of brochures that no one really cared about. The money was a secondary consideration, and it still is... mostly. (That said, I'm lucky enough to be able to comfortably pay the bills doing something I wanted to do ever since I was a little girl, so it would take a lot to get me to go back to copywriting/editing work.)

I jumped straight to writing erotica because I thought it would sell better than other types of self-published fiction. In some ways I think that's true still. You're probably less likely to become a breakout star in the Andy Weir/Hugh Howey mould, but there's always money in things that make people's banana stand.

there's always money in things that make people's banana stand

How long have you been sitting on that one?

How long have you been sitting on that one?

More than twenty minutes is just excessive, I find.

Do you notice fads or phases in what is popular with smut or do you just write what you like at the time?

The best advice is to write in one specific niche per pen name. You want to write cuckolding erotica? Devote one pen name solely to cuckolding erotica. You're writing about tickling fetishes, or rubber? If that's your focus, make it the only thing you write under that pen name. (The reason for this is so that people who find one story they like of yours can be relatively sure they'll enjoy everything else under the same category.)

The biggest mistake I made under my first pen name was trying to write what I felt like at the time under one big banner, assuming that people would pick and choose what they liked. It just doesn't work like that.

That said, there are absolutely fads, and there's nothing wrong with trying to branch out into them if you're willing to. (Two of the biggest fads in recent years have been step-sibling stories and reverse harem stories, especially for erotic romance.) It's always a bit of a gamble setting up a new pen name to try and capture some of that market, especially if you're writing longer-form and you're not particularly fast, but the payoff can be worth it.

What smut do you think is the most overrated?

What is the most underrated?

Why?

Good question!

So there's this habit when you get into erotica -- whether it's reading or writing -- of finding the thing that works for you and then just reading that genre or kink or author over and over. (Trust me, as someone who depends on people coming back to my books, I'm very much trying not to dissuade people from that; being able to provide someone with a reliable outlet is a good thing.) That said, I think people often overlook anthology collections of erotica. They're sometimes a bit hit-or-miss, but there's a lot to be said for being able to get a broad selection of writers and kinks that you might otherwise never have found (or even looked for!), plus there's the feeling that everyone submitting work is putting their best foot forward in a genre that can often lead to writers phoning it in. If you're looking for good smut, a 'Best of Year' anthology is usually a safe bet, and you might even find yourself enjoying something you'd never even considered before.

As for most overrated: Fifty Shades gets a lot of hate, a lot of it justified, but Pauline Réage's Story of O takes every criticism you could level at Fifty Shades and turns it up to eleven. It's an absolute clusterfuck of a novel and -- while I can't deny its historical importance when it comes to representations of BDSM -- it's crazy to me that so many people hold it in such high esteem.

Hello!!

How did you know you had a knack for this? Do you ever get embarrassed by something you’re writing? Do you usually write about kinks you aren’t into?

Thanks!!

How did you know you had a knack for this?

Honestly, I didn't at the start. It was something I decided to try on a whim, and it turned out that people were into it. I like to think I've improved over the years, but I don't think it was like uncovering some hidden talent; it's really just a case of practice.

Do you ever get embarrassed by something you’re writing?

All the time, but it's usually just because I can't get my writing to do what I want it to rather than because of some sort of sexual content. (Although that said, prior to Covid I used to work in my local library a lot for a change of scene, and I was always constantly flustered at the thought of someone seeing what was on my screen. Tiny fonts and back to the wall was my solution.)

Do you usually write about kinks you aren’t into?

Usually, yes! Sometimes they'll touch on something that gets me going, but at the end of the day it's a job; I want to write what will sell the most copies and make the most people satisfied, so I'm not really writing with my own interests in mind. (Plus the idea of monetising my kinks to the stage where I stop enjoying them -- which can definitely happen -- is something that doesn't really sound like a fun time.)

Perhaps it's different for every author, but I can personally say that writing and self-publishing my own kinks certainly hasn't changed my enjoyment of them one iota.

Then again, I'm writing and publishing as a hobby, not a job, so I can write about whatever floats my boat without as many restrictions.

And, I happen to have a lot of different types of kinks that fit under a larger umbrella, so it's not particularly difficult to write about a different one when I'm desiring a change of pace.

Oh, absolutely. I'm not speaking to a universal experience, because that would be ridiculous, but it's still something that I've found to be true for a lot of people, especially those who do it full time. I love my job, but there are plenty of days when it very much feels like work, and one of the things I've found helps to keep me from burning out is to have things that I enjoy for their own sake without wondering about what other people will think of them.

The best analogy I ever got was when people talk to high-end chefs about what they cook for themselves when they get home, and are a bit disappointed when the answer is (usually) something simple and easy.

Hi Hazel, thanks so much for hosting this AMA! I haven't caught your last few, so apologies if you've covered this question before.

I'm interested to hear your perspective on the presence and even romanticization of unhealthy or toxic relationship archetypes in smut and romance novels. I don't personally read much smut myself, but I've seen so many tropes and relationship patterns that seems really unhealthy as romance lit and smut becomes more mainstream.

I know this is a complex issue with a lot of grey area and nuance. But I'd be interested to hear what you think specifically about:

1.) How necessary those kinds of archetypes are for the smut genre and writing sexy scenes and characters?

2.) How much responsibility do authors of this kind of media have to portray and encourage healthy relationship dynamics?

Thanks again for hosting the AMA!

My thoughts on it are... complicated. (I'm probably going to come back to this one and edit it as new ideas come in, so you might want to check back for updates. My OOTL people know what I'm talking about.)

• So first and foremost, I think people have a duty to be responsible consumers of media, whatever form that media takes. If you're consciously supporting things you believe are harmful -- especially financially -- then that incentivises the production of more (and more extreme) forms of that media, which isn't a good thing. If there's one thing we've seen over the last five or ten years, it's that culture doesn't exist in a vacuum, and propagating stereotypes or negative portrayals can actively make the world a worse place to be. If I don't believe in doing that as a consumer of media, how can I justify doing it as a creator of media?

• However, there's an issue of reader agency to consider. My readers are all (I hope) consenting adults engaging with a fiction. Is it really my place to judge if that fiction is something they can't choose to enjoy? To take an extreme example, I don't use rape as a plot device in my stories because the idea doesn't sit right with me... but 62% of women have reported rape fantasies, with 14% reporting it more than once per week. We're all grown up enough to recognise that there is a difference between fantasising about something and wanting it to actually happen, and I know for a fact I have sexual fantasies that are hot as fuck in the moment but would be absolutely ruinous if they became more than a fantasy. How do we reconcile those two facts? Do we say that the fantasies themselves are wrong, even though they don't hurt anyone (as long as they stay as fantasies), or do we say that it's not unethical to provide material that plays into them (even though I stand by my first point that media should strive not to do harm)? It's complicated, and I don't have a straightforward answer. You could make the case that alcohol consumption is higher than it should be and so the bartender (or bar owner) is making the problem worse by providing alcohol to customers in the knowledge that no matter how careful he is he might be serving an alcoholic, but at the same time, does that mean I shouldn't be able to get a glass of wine? Probably not. I would hope that no one comes away from Fifty Shades thinking that Christian Grey is a model of good BDSM practice, but at the same time I'm not going to judge anyone who gets their rocks off fantasising about being treated that way.

• As for whether it's necessary to have those archetypes in order to be successful, I'm relatively comfortable in saying that it isn't; I think the market is large enough and the demand is strong enough that well-written work will find its audience. However, at a certain point it becomes a question of whether there's benefit to it. A couple of years ago someone asked a similar question about whether or not I thought there was room in romance novels for 'Average Joe'-type protagonists, and I responded that I thought it was possible... but at the same time, would I risk writing 90,000 words of Average Joe romance that might sell, when I could make him a cold and aloof billionaire cowboy astronaut and likely double my sales? It's a tough question to answer. (It's also a bit ridiculous when phrased like that, but it does have serious repercussions in other forms. For example, I frequently get the urge to write lesbian romance, because it's a very underserved genre -- but I know that FF romance will not sell as well as MF romance. That sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy after a while, because if there's the perception that they won't sell well, fewer people write them, which means they never find their audience, which means they don't sell well, which means fewer people write them, and... well, on and on we go.)

I have a large database of smut that I've written. I used to have them posted on an old website, but have since posted them now on YouPorn. Where's the best place to place them and maybe make a buck or two?

As much as I dislike supporting ol' Jeffy Bezos, Amazon's KDP system is certainly the easiest game in town. You could try things like Patreon, but if you're writing within Amazon's acceptable parameters and you're willing to put the work into things like cover design, I'd probably start there.

When you're working do you have a daily word count that you try to hit?

I try and hit two thousand words every day. I'm probably successful about 85% of days. I have a spreadsheet that helps me log it, specifically because I find it very easy to call it quits when it's not going well, and being able to tell myself I'll just do another fifteen minutes or just grab another few hundred words helps me break it down into easier chunks. There's an Anthony Bourdain quote I've always liked:

'I understand there's a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons and old movies. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid, and outwit, that guy.'

Having a wordcount and sticking to it as best I can is one of those strategems.

That's with the understanding that I'll often do more, especially on days when it's going really well, but it's also every day including weekends and holidays. I know people in the industry who consider it a waste of a day if they don't hit five thousand words (and some who regularly hit ten thousand), but I've found that that's my sweet spot without burning out. It also gives me time to work on my non-smut writing, which I neglected for years but I've recently found I need to make time for in order to be happy.

What's your favourite word for genitals?

Mine is "dong"

Cunt. Cunt for days.

Excellent choice, I definitely approve

Well, you have a Spaceballs reference in your username; obviously you have excellent taste :p

I'm a big fan of dong as well

I'm a big fan of dong as well

Now there's a Tinder bio...

Do you ever write something so good that you have to put it aside and flick the bean?

I've occasionally got myself riled up enough that I go and find something else to get off to, but it's super rare that I just go for it over my own stuff. I think the narcissism alone would be enough to make me explode. Ultimately, when I'm writing I'm at work; I'm more concerned with getting the book done and getting it to sound good than I am with getting off.

 

^{I mean, I'm not saying never...}

What is your best euphemism for a “pulsing genitalia” for both genders?

I'm not really a fan of describing genitalia as doing things autonomously. I'm more likely to go for something like 'She felt him throb in her hand' or 'He felt her tighten around his fingers'. It's just a little less... eldritch.

Anything that makes someone go '... wait, what the fuck?' is the enemy of good sex writing.

[deleted]

I tend to be pretty judicious with my use of comedy sex terms, because they have a tendency to pull the reader out of the story, so that's not really an issue. I like to keep it simple. You can't go wrong with cocks and cunts.

When it comes to removing stuff, it's usually just because I've gone too over-the-top with a description of a sex act or what I think is flirty banter, and when I read it over again when I'm editing I just have a 'Jesus Christ, Hazel, dial it back' moment. A blowjob doesn't need to be a page and a half, and nobody talks like that.

As a pure amateur who has mostly written collaboratively here on reddit and elsewhere, what do you think is the state of the industry for someone who might want to make some pocket, if not living money, from writing erotica?

Has it gotten too crowded with reduced payouts to really make a new voice capable of putting something out there? Is it only possible if you spend hours and weeks shilling and marketing anywhere and everywhere to get that initial group of readers?

I mostly ask because I have gotten a lot of good feedback on my writing for the past ~3 years or so of taking a story approach to smut, with fully realized characters and arcs, and it's always in the back of my mind to try... But it is daunting to even know where to start. (And I won't ask you to read and judge ;))

In short, it's a numbers game: if you provide regular content in a relatively popular niche, especially if you've got decent covers, you're (probably) going to make at least beer money doing it. Learning how your particular niche works is always helpful, though. Marketing is good, but understanding who you're marketing to is a good first step.

There's often the feeling especially with newer professionals that the work itself will be enough to draw in readers, but they forget that in order to be successful you've got to also be your own editor and marketing team and publicist and cover designer and... well, all that other good stuff. When it doesn't work immediately, it's easy to get disheartened, but it's as valuable a part of the job as cranking out stories. You don't need to make it the main part of the job -- especially once you hit a certain critical mass -- but it's still absolutely vital.

Portarossa in Italian means "Red door".

Is this an allusion to the seventies classic "Behind the green door" ?

Hazel is my name; I picked the name Redgate out of a phonebook when I was looking for a pseudonym. (Red gate, Porta rossa...)

But damn, I think I like your version better.

[deleted]

It varies depending on the genre and the niche. My best guess is that it's about 75% female to 25% male for my readers, but that's going to change a lot depending on who's reading it and what you're writing. (If you're writing, say, sissification porn, you're likely to get a much higher percentage of male readers.)

I'm an absolute sucker for terrible crime novels. I cannot get enough of them.

A bit of a stereotype but why do you think smut is so popular among especially ladies while gents tend to go for porn? I once tried reading smut of an ex-gf of mine who disliked porn because it was unrealistic and well, the pizza delivery porn I watch seemed to have a more realistic plot than her smut book.

So what's the appeal according to yourself?

My guess would be because porn is traditionally produced for what's called the 'male gaze': it's geared towards the male experience, so women can often feel left out. Consider things like the gratuitous moaning (a signal to the person fucking that they're doing really well), or the contorted angles (so you can see both the cock entering her and her face at the same time -- an angle that women don't get during sex), or even going as far as lesbian scenes where the women have Wolverine-style long nails (which... well, if you need to be told why that's a bad idea, cut your damn nails).

That's not to say there isn't wonderful porn directed by women and aimed at women, because there absolutely is, but erotica and erotic romance tend to skip a lot of the traditional trappings of male-gaze porn and focus on things like descriptions of the experience. Yes, they're usually equally unrealistic -- look at Fifty Shades, where Ana Steele is a plain and virginal nobody student at the start of the novel, while Christian is a hung erotically-charged billionaire who has somehow decided that she's the only person he'll ever want -- but they're unrealistic in ways that are geared towards a different audience.

Now there's a very important question we need to be asking there -- namely, are we socialised into those preferences or is it inherent to being a man or a woman? -- but that's above my pay grade. You could similarly ask 'Why do men prefer action movies?'; the answer, it looks like, is because action movies are designed for men to like them, and because society says men should like movies where things blow up.

I'm an absolute sucker for terrible crime novels.

I'm guessing you're a Stone Barrington fan.

My go-to for trashy crime books are Chris Carter's Robert Hunter series. (I have a love-hate relationship with them, but they got me through a very rough time.) I'm also currently four books into Jonathan Nasaw's E.L. Pender books, which are... OK?

Basically, give me anything where people are being killed according to some sort of pattern and I am there, but having read some of the Stone Barrington reviews, I think I'm going to have to check them out. They sound dreadful :)

Would you touch a poop for $20?

I'm not a coprophiliac, but twenty bucks is twenty bucks...

Hey I recognize that username. Thanks so much for your /r/outoftheloop answers.

How do you learn and remember so much ?

You're very welcome!

The truth is, I don't remember all that much: it most comes down to having a good broad-but-not-particularly-deep base of knowledge (which partly comes from having a job where I can indulge my desire to sit and read about a lot of different topics whenever they catch my eye), and being able to google to find what I need. A lot of the time the way those deep dives play out comes from me asking OK, if I knew nothing about this topic, what questions would I ask? What do I need to understand as background information in order to get to the meat of what the question is actually asking?

That's just something that comes with practice: reading (especially reading critically), finding reliable sources of information (and actually listening to what they're saying, even if it doesn't align with your own preconceived ideas), looking for the nuance in the story (because truth resists simplicity), and then writing it up in a way that makes sense to someone who isn't in your head and is going to have questions of their own. The skill isn't in knowing stuff, necessarily, but in taking what other people know, making sure it seems reasonable, and then collating it from a number of different sources into something that makes sense as a complete narrative; it's presentation and performance, and it wouldn't be possible without other reliable websites doing 90% of the work for me. Having the time to put all of that together is a luxury, but it's also a joy to hear that people understand things better because of the work I put in.

Hi! Do you ever get up in the morning and feel like you're really not in the mood to write about such a topic? If so, how do you work through or around that feeling?

There's a quote that John Green uses, ostensibly from his dad: 'Coalminers don't get coalminer's block.' The implication is that you just sit down and power through, because that's the job. To an extent that's true -- sometimes you do just have to put on your big girl pants and get to work, especially when you've got a deadline -- but as I've got older I find myself easing up on myself a little more. There are a couple of things that help:

• I work on multiple projects at once, so if I'm not feeling a particular story I can just go and work on something else.

• I try to keep enough of a buffer between my completion schedule and my publication schedule that if I'm really not feeling writing then I can take some time for myself. Usually that involves taking some time for self-care, which more often than not means reading a book. Nine times out of ten, that sparks an idea and I'm right back in position.

• I subscribe to the idea that writing something is better than writing nothing, so I'll sit down and do anything, even if it's just fifty or a hundred words. Most of the time that gets me over the hill and I can start up again.

But all of that said, there are frequently days when I've got a story that's 90% or 95% finished, and all I need to do before I can publish it is to get that last little bit done, and no amount of procrastinating is going to make that go away. In that case, all you can do is sit down and power through it... because coalminers don't get coalminer's block.

I'm sure someone else has asked this so I'll be looking but on the off-chance that they didn't...

I'm an aspiring (at age 46 lol) m/m romantic erotica writer and I have dreams/aspirations of starting to publish my writing but I'm not sure my stuff is good enough. Do you have any suggestions or advice for someone who is wanting to get into publishing this kind of writing?

Just do it. Seriously. Set up a pen name on Amazon, research the genre you want to write in and see what's doing well, and do what they're doing. Having such a low barrier to entry means that a lot of dreck gets through, but it's also wonderfully freeing just to be able to put your stuff out there and see what people think of it -- because believe me, they will not be shy of telling you if they're not a fan. (You're going to need a thick skin. That's the nature of any creative job in the age of the internet.)

Other than that, the thing you need to remember is that there's more to the job than writing. If you're self-publishing, you have to be your own editor, your own cover designer, your own marketing team. Writing might come naturally to you, but no one's going to find your work unless you do all that other stuff too, and that tends to be the part where people become dissuaded and give up. Finding a balance between the two halves of yourself -- Creative and Business -- is tricky, but it gets easier with practice.

If you're genuinely worried if your stuff isn't good enough, though, start throwing some vignettes up on Reddit and ask for feedback from people. Reddit is filled with subs devoted to erotic writing, from /r/DirtyPenPals to /r/SexyStories, so use them to your advantage! It's a whole world full of beta readers!

Good luck!

Thoughts on Chuck Tingle?

I'd love his sales figures and name recognition, but we're sort of in different but tangential businesses: he's basically doing a satire of the weirder parts of the erotica game, whereas most people I know who are doing it are playing it relatively straight. That's a bit of a double-edged sword in some ways, because good sex writing is difficult and having it be seen by a lot of people as a punchline can be grating, but at the same time I've got to respect the hustle and the way he's built up his body of work, and his cover game is on point.

I will say that a solid 80% of times when I tell people what I do for a living and that I won't tell them my pen name, their first question is 'Are you Chuck Tingle?' You can't buy that kind of publicity.

Super late to the party, but most of my more pressing questions have been asked by others already anyway. Still got two more, sorry if they have already been answered and I just didn't see them:

1) How has your copywriting/editing influenced your fiction or vice versa?

I actually started writing (PG-13) fiction long before I went into marketing but I found that there's a sort of synergy in both directions, writing fiction makes me more creative in my copy and writing copy gives me the tools to really play with my fiction readers' mind and emotions if the need arises. I'm sure I'm not the only one but I'd like your take on it.

2) Have you ever done commission smut before going pro? Or do you still, for the right price?

I did that as a side hustle for a while (give me two or more characters either established IP, your OC or as a general concept, a setting and a rough outline of your kinks and I'll make it happen lmao), but it devolved into basically researching super niche fetishes for hours for much less pay than it was worth to me all things considered, so I stopped eventually. But it was stupid fun, really shows you what makes people tick, especially if you don't kinkshame besides a couple obvious hard limits.

Yeah that's about it. Glad you're doing this (will also read previous AmAs later), your actual work is not my cup of tea but it's objectively splendid and beautifully written, and your story of how you made it as a full time erotica writer is inspiring and motivating!

So I absolutely hated copywriting and editing as a job. I struggled through for a couple of years because I liked the freedom that came from being self-employed (and still do!), but knowing that I was spending all that time writing stuff that no one was ever going to actually enjoy had a real Sisyphus vibe to it. That sounds like I'm being down on copywriting, which isn't my intention, but I realised early on that it isn't for me -- so when the opportunity came up to do something else, it gave me the impetus to really throw everything I had at the fiction so I didn't have to go back to it. In terms of things I gained from it, though, the biggest things were learning how to write to the brief rather than just throwing everything out and seeing what sticks; it taught me a lot more about the business side of the job than the creative side.

I did do commission smut for a while, but I've always been a bit... scattershot when it comes to actually finding new work. (Another reason why 'freelance copywriter and editor' wasn't really for me :p) The writing was fun, but getting the commissions was always a pain in the ass, and even though most of my customers were lovely, it only takes a couple of difficult ones to sour you on the whole thing.

Thanks for the question!

Sorry for the late question: I know you write smut and romance, but how would you recommend I leverage my freelance writing career to break into fiction writing? Specifically, sci-fi and fantasy.

If you're writing freelance, you're already likely to be good at two things: producing a lot of content, and writing to the brief. Conveniently, those are two of the most important things you need to make a living self-publishing.

My advice to anyone, regardless of genre, is to treat it like a research project. You don't need to do anything new. You're not going to be the person who comes up with a great new cover design or style of blurb that just blows people away. What you need to do is figure out what's already working -- Amazon's Top 100 is a great resource for this, and you can get a month of Kindle Unlimited for free to check it out -- and do that but consistently and better. I can't speak to the specifics of sci-fi/fantasy, but I imagine that most of it is going to be the same. Am I writing the same length as everyone else? Do my covers look professional and also genre-appropriate? Have I got my formatting and blurbs and keywords down? Get that figured out, and then write to market.

Remember, writing is only half of it when you self-publish; you've got to do all of the other writing-adjacent things too, or at least invest money in getting someone to do it for you. (Personally I find that side of things to be an enormous pain in the ass, but it's part of the job whether you like it or not, and no one's successful without it.)

Good luck!

I've enjoyed reading your in-depth posts on Reddit. What books do you recommend to get better at writing?

Any book.

I know that sounds like a cop-out answer, but I don't really think that you learn how to write from reading about writing (once you get past an understanding of grammar). The best way to learn how to write is to pick up a book, take a page from it, and go through it sentence by sentence. What works for you? What doesn't work for you? What feels clumsy and what flows naturally? Is the writing so flowery it gets in the way of your understanding? Can you do it better? Does it conjure up a specific image in your mind, or are you filling in the gaps yourself? Do the arguments carry on naturally? Does it even make sense?

The advantage of this approach is that it's often more beneficial to do it with a bad book than it is to do it with a good one, or one you enjoyed. Other than that, it's just a case of practice and reading around in a bunch of different genres and time periods. It does take time, but after a while you'll start doing it with everything you read.

That said, for books about the craft of writing that are very readable, Stephen King's On Writing is tough to beat.

I have two questions. If you answer either or both, awesome. If not I'm usually late to these anyway. Do you suffer from writer's block ever? When did it go from fun to work, if it ever did? Thanks either way.

1) Yeah, but I think that's normal in any job; we just have a special word for it when a writer gets stuck. Normally it passes pretty quickly, but there was one period where I had a completely unmanageable bout with depression and my ability to write just shut down for about six months. It was literally all I could manage to make it from my bed to the couch, and the idea of writing anything -- let alone anything that wasn't hot garbage -- was roughly equivalent to being told I needed to climb Mount Everest and be back by suppertime. Thankfully that passed itself over time (partly because I forced myself to write), but that's probably one of the only times where I've had what I'd call 'writer's block' and have it feel completely insurmountable.

2) So I'm not really a huge romance/erotica reader for myself, and I certainly wasn't at the beginning. I've always been a writer, but it's not like I was writing romance for myself and then decided to monetise it. In that sense it's always been work, but that doesn't mean it's not also fun, even when it's not fun, you know? I wake up in the morning and I sit at my desk and I'm lucky enough to get to do the job that I wanted to do as a little girl (give or take). That's tremendously freeing, so even when I'm having a bad day at the 'office' I can keep that in mind and still get a little bit of a thrill out of it. If you catch me on a random work hour of a random work day, the odds are I'd prefer to be doing something else -- watching a movie or reading a book, say -- but the fact that it's very much a job doesn't mean I don't enjoy myself immensely doing it.

You're very welcome!

How do you stop yourself from getting distracted all the time as you're writing these delightful things to titillate your audience?

Imagine jerking off to a jigsaw of someone fucking. You're so busy figuring out how all the parts fit together that the question of whether it's sexy in the moment doesn't really cross your mind.

It's a job. Breaking off to crank one out doesn't feature very often.

How do you avoid these words: "throbbing," "squelching" and " member"? In all seriousness, what are some of the must-avoid clichés out there that immediately scream "newbie writer"?

I actually quite like throbbing, although I tend to go for things like 'She felt it throb under her touch', which takes some of the pressure off and makes it less like it's about to come to life and scuttle out of the door like something from a Lovecraft novella.

The worst one is trying to be funny or too flowery with your sex terms. No one's getting off to your yoghurt-slinger, no one wants to visit your Holiest of Holies, and no one has ever been aroused by the word splooge. Just stick with the basics: cock, cunt, pussy, dick, breasts, tits, balls. Anything else is a distraction, and the last thing you want is someone to be so distracted by your choice of words that they stop being horny.

Keep your reader in the moment of the story.

This reminds me of my favorite Hemmingway quote, where he speaks of his contemporary Faulkner:

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."

I've enjoyed that quote too, not least because it's one of the rare stories about a comeback that can actually be sourced.

Oh my, an entire site dedicated to sourcing quotes? Thanks for the new rabbit hole. 😁

Between QuoteInvestigator and Etymonline, you could lose track of multiple weeks.

Is Amazon still king or are there other equally viable avenues for self-published authors to distribute erotica?

The Patreon model can work pretty well, if you have a big enough following and are good enough at providing regular updates, but I think it would take a lot to be successful in the industry if you didn't have any presence on Amazon.

What do you think sets apart a good smut writer from a poor one? Are there any traps that you think writers of the genre often fall into?

I think there can be a bunch of things, and a lot of them come down to personal taste, but one of my biggest issues is bad dialogue -- and that's something that happens a lot on romance/erotica. If your characters don't talk like real people, they won't feel like real people, and so it will be very difficult for me to get invested in their story.

Read your dialogue out loud. If it doesn't sound like something that someone would say, write it again until it does.

Do you ever find yourself constrained by publishing through Amazon? Is there any content that they've been unwilling publish, or is it entirely up to your own personal limits?

Amazon's rules on what you can and can't publish are 1) super vague, 2) weirdly thought-out and 3) often down to the individual whim of whoever signs off on your work after a dispute.

There's obviously some stuff that's out -- non-con, bestiality, necrophilia, underage -- but there are also weird edge cases that come out of that. I've heard it said that the shifter writers (werewolves and other were-people) had a real tough time of it a few years ago, because Amazon drew the line very inconsistently; you can have sex with a werewolf, but only in human form. Similiarly, you can fuck a vampire but not a zombie, even though they're both undead, and even though you can't write books about fucking animals, both dinosaurs (because they're extinct) and cryptids are mostly fair game.

The only thing I've ever been called up on is a couple of hypnosis-themed stories. Weirdly, it was a couple of stories where it was very obviously consensual, despite me having published more mind-control erotica in the past, but they decided they weren't going to cut it. Now I mostly play it safe.

What’s your favourite story/genre you have yet to write?

It's not erotica -- well, not necessarily -- but I'd like to write a full noir-style mystery. I have an unabashed love of playing into genre tropes, and that Big Sleep/Maltese Falcon/Laura-stype of book feels like it would be a wonderful sandbox to play in for ninety thousand words or so.

Do you ever act out or play out erotic scenes with a significant other to work out details before committing the scene to pen?

Not so often. It usually happens the other way around, if anything; I'll be fooling around with a partner, one of us will say something that I think is sexy, and I have to make a conscious effort not to break off and write it down for later.

That said, I will admit that one time I got a commission to write a goo-girl story and, having absolutely no idea how to get started, I spent ten minutes finger-fucking a tub of Vaseline just to get an idea of the sensation and the sounds it might make.

How are you celebrating your CAKE DAY??

Same way I do every year: I drink a shitload of wine, eat leftover Christmas food, and do this AMA. I'm five years in now, and long may it continue!

How many pages do you put into your romance/smut books?

I write a lot of smut to my girlfriend; she tells me I should write a book. A female friend has read bits of it and has told me that since 50 shades, there Is definitely a market for smut.

I have put off writing a major work, thinking it would probably not yield much reward for the time I put in. I'm a single father with 2 kids at home. I work 2 jobs. I could maybe get serious and put in the time. Just basically want to know how much smut I'd need to make a novel.

If you're writing a romance/erotica novel, you probably want about sixty thousand words -- fifty thousand on the low end. That's definitely less than you'd expect out of most novels (which run to eighty or ninety thousand), and a lot less than you'd see in epic fantasy (which can easily run upwards of 180,000), but it's still a big chunk of work. The Fifty Shades books run to about 120,000-150,000 each, if I remember correctly, so there are definitely exceptions, and a lot of the more fantasy-based erotic novels tend to run long too. In short, if you're doing it to make a quick buck and you're going to get disheartened if it flops, writing might not be for you. (That sounds harsh, but it's a learning curve, and you will make mistakes along the way.)

I wish I could say there was an easy checklist solution, but ultimately it is a gamble, and it always will be. Good books get ignored every day, and ones that are less-than-stellar hit a critical mass of audience appreciation for some unknown reason and make it big. (It's also doubly difficult when self-publishing, because it's often difficult to tell whether something is good or not; if you're traditionally published, you have a whole bunch of people who have to sign off on your work first, so you can at least be sure that it's probably not terrible before it goes to print.)

would you consider necrophilia smut?

I'd consider any prose that's designed to arouse to be smut, regardless of its themes. That doesn't mean I'm necessarily equally comfortable with all content, but yeah... if someone can make a living writing a series called Zomboners, I'm not going to be the one to tell them that they're not welcome at the potluck.

Hazel,

Questions at the bottom since you're busy; thanks for the answers (I found insight on splitting pen names especially helpful) and your time especially.

My writing has been described by a lot of people (including myself) as overflowing with purple prose, baroque, visceral overload, flowery language, and whatever else thanks to my fondness of formatting random shit.

Perhaps in spite of this, a very distinct word has come across many times from writers much more - in my opinion - capable than I (they also read!): a writer's voice.

I self-identify as a naïve artist with minimal exposure to the arts, if you will. I'd like to self-publish if only to say that I can or I did; in other words, I don't quite know why other than having a voracious ego.

I love writing but don't enjoy reading; the amount of editing work someone does in my wake is sometimes staggering when I look at the revision history in Google Docs.

- My range varies from pure metaphor and flowers to dripping wet cunts (I promise I read the other questions!), but is there an audience for a voice specializing in heavily kinetic/physicality based erotica from the female perspective?

And. If I may~ a follow-on that's more niche and "not your problem."

- How do you overcome impostor syndrome? I'm 31 and fancy myself without a creative bone in my body, only even thinking of writing just a year ago. I don't know how to handle positive reception or feedback and make it work for me.

All my best and have a wonderful day.

OK, so I'll give you some advice as someone who has also been accused of talk-typing before -- you're at a nine, and you need to be at about a six. Your formatting and purple prose is getting in the way of what you're trying to say, which means that you're working against your own interests. Readers generally won't stand for it, especially in genre fiction (like erotica) where the goal is to get a story across.

Having your own voice is vital, but you don't want to read like a 2006 MySpace page.

s there an audience for a voice specializing in heavily kinetic/physicality based erotica from the female perspective?

Yes, but you're going to have to incorporate that into something else. That's not a genre by itself, and it's not something you can really put in a blurb. Get your story, then use that style as a way of keeping readers hooked. Physicality is hot! Female perspectives are hot! But they've got to be in service to plot and character (in novels) or to getting people off (in short erotica), or your audience is probably not getting what they want.

How do you overcome impostor syndrome?

Shit, man... when I figure it out, I'll let you know.

How would you defend against these criticisms of many erotic fics? (I'm sure these tropes help to sell more erotic fics but from a literary perspective, they're cringe-worthy):

1. generic covers (photoshopped/airbrushed shirtless dude with a 6-pack, etc)

2. usage of vulgar terms to describe genitals & sexual acts (cock, cunt, blowjob, etc) instead of more artful terms like manhood/member, opening/entrance, etc

3. characters who are too perfect, especially in the case of male characters, which panders to people's superficial nature

4. inexplicable pairings (Exhibit A being 50 Shades of Gray where an insanely hot & rich guy is inexplicably infatuated with a random woman) which pander to a woman's desire to put herself in the leading lady's shoes

5. unnecessary detail in sex scenes which is clearly just reader fanservice because it doesn't move the plot forward or develop the characters (and yes, I realize that two characters having sex for the first time is a big change to their relationship but that still doesn't necessitate an explicit description of their entire first time. Just think of when movies fade out on a couple starting to make out and then fades back in with them laying in bed next to each other the next morning--you got the gist of what happened without having to see it).

6. even when sex starts out as "rape", by the end, the rapee is enjoying the rape (although I don't doubt that this happens occasionally IRL, this is clearly an overused trope in erotic fiction. It seems that few people enjoy true rape fics because of the ultimately depressing & even sickening nature of them)

Coming in a little hostile there, but sure:

1) It's literally genre fiction. The covers are supposed to be generic; that's what the word means. They're a signifier to the audience that what you're getting is what you're expecting -- that the author knows what you're looking for.

2) Cock and cunt are marvellous words that I will never apologise for using. There's a place for subtlety, but the terminology plays to the needs of the story. If you're writing about rough, hot fucking, you use rough, hot words. (There's also a point to be made that writing should reflect reality. Most people are more likely to have said something like 'I need to feel your cock inside me' than 'Please put your manhood in my entrance.')

3 and 4) It's escapist fiction. People want to feel wanted, and I don't think that's a bad thing. Being wanted by someone who would normally be fabulously unattainable is no different than the fantasy provided by any action movie or lottery ticket.

5) If your story is an erotic romance, 'detail in sex scenes' is literally the point. You can maybe argue that some people go too far and it gets boring, but the genre is built on reading about people fucking. There are plenty of books that do fade to black -- including the ones I've given away up there -- but it's a little like criticising a cookbook for having too many pictures of food in it.

6) I don't personally write stories like that, so it's not really my place to defend it. That said, I did post earlier on a similar question about the ethical presentation of unethical acts, which was a long answer but basically boils down to 'While we have a responsibility to make good choices in terms of the things we create and consume, we also need to acknowledge that there's nothing inherently wrong with fantasies, and a prudish I don't like it so you can't have it mentality strips readers of their agency.'

If you find it cringeworthy... don't read it, I guess? The genre isn't to everyone's taste, but it's developed its conventions over time because a lot of people want exactly that. We can try and produce quality work within the ruled lines of what people are expecting -- and I do! -- but my job isn't to completely remake the wheel; it's to meet them in the middle ground between the story they want to read and the story I want to tell.