Ramone Quides: Destroyer of Good Erotica!

I was thinking back on the thirty or so erotica stories I’ve published, and how my approach to writing has changed since I started four years ago. All of them started with a spark. Something I read, listened to, saw, or overheard. Some began by witnessing life’s situations, and a wonderment of where the situation might go. Others were just my wacky brain being, well, wacky!

(For those who have actually met me, you’ll get it. For the rest, consider yourselves spared!)

Then, there are over fifty partially written stories, feasible briefs, or detailed outlines of something that could become worthwhile, if and when I can muster up a connection to the characters and underlying emotions in them. For I am, first and foremost, an emotional writer. I need to feel a connection with the story to write it, and it’s better for me to go days without writing that create obvious trash.

It is within those fiftyish that “Ramone Quides: Destroyer of Good Erotica” lurks. I have taken perfectly good stories and completely mucked them up, under the auspices of thinking I’ve been suddenly enlightened with brilliance. Certain that my sudden inspiration will part the erotica heavens and reign down glitter and gold from high above.

That has actually happened! Once. All the other times, it’s been…

“What have I done?!”

Brain squirrels start scrambling to and fro, trying to recall the perfectly good premise that I’ve turned into muck. Past auto-saves may aid in my recovery, but not always, because I’ve pivoted so many times that rediscovering a connective thread would be harder that finding the map to Atlantis. It’s actually faster and easier to trash them and start over.

There are three stories that I can recall putting a match to, with the most memorable being “A Lesson in Sensuality Part Two”, which appears in the Rosy app. Part One was about a college student intimately engaging with a thirty-something woman while touring Europe. She becomes a muse, teaching him about the connective threads of sensuality.

My editor liked the story, but challenged me to evolve the ending into a Part Two. I’d never done that. Never wrote a multi-chaptered anything. I’d used a connective thread between tales, like the same venue, but not this. Still, I love a challenge, and am willing to try anything twice, so I dove in.

We brainstormed concepts that never completely aligned between us, but there was enough overlap that I felt it could work. That’s where old, unproductive writing methods reared their ugly heads. I included too much backstory, trying to ensure the reader would have everything they might want as a stand-alone story. Connective scenes became too complicated, and soon the product was ridiculously unwieldy. Parsing and pontificating immediately exposed that I was a fish out of water, flopping wildly without realizing that the source of my angst was the baited hook of wanting my efforts to win out.

Ripping the hook out and swimming out to sea was the right choice, so long as I reflection added wisdom. I erased Part Two and started fresh, with awareness of where not to go. Two days later, it was done. I returned to in two days after that for a fresh read and minor edits.

So, What Did I Learn?

The immediate impact was two-fold. The first was a reminder of my Project Manager past. Don’t overcommit to an optionless path. There should always be an escape route. Not to evade responsibility, but to strengthen resolve.

The second was a change to my revision and editing process. After roughing out a story, I’ll set it aside for a bit to release my emotional attachment. When I return and discover revision points, I do that as inserted segmented rewrites, going back and forth in the same document until I’m content with that section before moving on.

Sure, there are still times when drastic measures appear to be the best course of action. I remember hearing about the struggle the band U2 went through in creating one of their most beloved songs, “Where The Streets Have No Name“. The remaining songs for The Joshua Tree release had come together over many months, but “Streets”, with two time signature shifts in the intro, was stalled.

The producer, seeing this going nowhere, opted for radical action. He would erase the tape, claim it was an accident, and force the band to relinquish the past and truly begin anew. An assistant saw what he was doing and saved the old tape. The shock of destroying months of work turned out to be just as effective as erasing it. The band figured it out, and the song became legendary.

I’ve stopped deleting them, opting instead to set them aside. Their rebirths have done well, and at some point I go back and try to figure out where I lost my way.

News and Updates

I’ve got a short, five day off-the-grid trip coming up, where I’ll be planting natives and pulling invasives on an island off of the Southern California coast. The living won’t be too primitive, and I’m looking forward to getting dirty.

My story, “Double Fantasy”, is in Rachel Kramer Bussel‘s latest collection, “The Big Book of Quickies: 69 Erotic Stories”, published by Cleis Press and available on 7/9/24 (preorders open now). Writing something worthy of her anthology excited me beyond words. You can find it at Bookshop, Cleis Press, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.

My dear friend and treasured mentor, Dr. Donna Jennings, has release an amazing resource for creating connective scenes and characters in your stories, whether erotic or not. “The Fiction Writer’s Sexuality Guide” uses worksheets and examples to help you create characters and scenes that are connective and alive. It’s available through Bookshop, Amazon and other booksellers.

And don’t forget about “For The Men V2”, which includes my male bisexuality exploration story “Sated Yearning”. It’s available in Kindle format at Amazon.

These stories won’t cool down the blowtorch heat some of us have been living with, but what better way to redirect it, eh?