Tag Archives: writing

Polished

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Back in December 2011, I joined in with the Curiosity Project – a blog swap project where your details and a list of your likes/dislikes are sent to another participating blogger and they send you a shoe box full of stuff they think you’ll like. In return, you do the same for another randomly allocated person.

The project has been on hold for a while, and although it’s due to restart soon, I miss getting exciting mail. So, in the words of Carrie Bradshaw, I got to thinking…

In March this year, Kristina Lloyd ran an excellent erotica workshop about how to spark up ideas for flash fiction pieces. Her suggestion? Nail polishes have cool names, so why not pick a colour name at random, brainstorm its associations and use it as the basis for a short story?

I keep meaning to give it a go, and then never quite getting round to it.

So, with kind permission from Kristina, here’s what I’m proposing:

If you’re a UK-based erotica writer (I would love to make this worldwide, but British postal regulations on nail polish are ridiculously tight) and you’d like some inspiration, I’m proposing a polish swap.

You send me your address and I match you randomly with another person. That person will send you a nail polish which you then use to inspire a piece of erotica/a blog post/–a short story in another genre. In return, you send out a polish to another participant.

Hopefully that makes sense, but to clarify:

The Rules…

(1) Email your name/pseudonym and full address, including a postcode, to sexblogofsorts@gmail.com before midnight on July 11th.
(2) Your name will be put into a hat and each participant will be drawn a secret recipient to send their nail polish to.
(3) You will receive an email with your recipients name and address on July 12th.
(4) You purchase a nail polish of your choice and send it to your recipient before July 18th. Because of the previously mentioned mailing regulations, please read this to make sure you’ve packaged/labelled your nail polish correctly.
(5) Please make sure the polish you choose has a name – it’s not much fun if someone gets a polish called ‘112.’ Good sources of relatively cheap polishes with good names are Maybelline and Rimmel 60 second.
(6) When you receive your nail polish, write a short piece of erotica/a blog post/a short story in another genre, inspired by its name. It’s up to you whether you share the story on your blog, but I will link to anyone who sends me details of their story once its written. There is no minimum/maximum work count for your story – it’s totally up to you.
(7) Hopefully it goes without saying, but this is open to both men and women.
(8) Your personal details will be forwarded only once to your secret project partner. Your information will not be shared with anyone else. If, however, someone does not receive a polish, I will send on the email address of their sender so that they can contact them and find out what happened to their parcel.
(9) This isn’t a competition – it’s just a bit of fun and an excuse to write something new. No winners, no prizes – sorry!

If I’ve missed anything, or you have questions, please let me know…

I’m excited!

Diehard Sentimentalist

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I’ve written before about why I write, in the sense of what motivates me to hit the keys, and why I chose erotica over, say, horror.

I haven’t written about why I write about the boy.

I’m not sure what he thinks my motivation is. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t think I’m driven by fairly honourable intentions, because more than once he’s asked ‘Why can’t you just keep a diary?’

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Asking for Trouble

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When I was staying with friends the other day, we were lying in the park and, having read the Sunday papers from cover to cover, had turned to Siri for amusement. I already have my favourite exchanges with Siri, namely:

‘Do you like anal, Siri?’

‘This isn’t about me, Charlie, it’s about you.’

Yep, OK, Siri, you’ve got me all figured out.

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The Suitcase – some thoughts

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4.40 a.m. and I wake up, in huge post-drunkenness need of water, to find out I won this.

I’m thrilled, for two reasons. Firstly, because, just as I understand the grudgingness at having to hand over £25 to a friend for essentially no reason, I get to be the smug friend on the receiving end of that grudgingness, which is awesome.

Secondly, because the other entries were damn good. I’ve not read them all, because not all were made publicly available, but I have read all of those which were. I too, loved Anna Sky’s closing line, the butterfly pinned to the board, probed ‘…until the novelty wore off, bright colours fading.’

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Lost

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My report from my A-Level French teacher said I ‘wasn’t a natural linguist,’ which was unfortunate, since by then I had six university offers to study languages and had therefore somewhat shut down my other options. I know all about the cringiness (sp.?) of getting to grips with speaking a new language, though, which is what inspired this piece, although it is fiction, and a bit of a half-hearted entry for this.

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Charlie? She’s a fucking letdown

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When I wrote about Eroticon a couple of posts ago, I was kind of hoping my nerves would settle before the day itself. Instead, the complete opposite proved true: I spent last night wide awake with nerves until 3.30, and I had to get up at 6.30 to drive to Bristol. Where I spent the whole day in a state of permanent terror.

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Butterflies

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It’s a weird week to be admitting that I’m more nervous than ever about what I write. Last weekend saw my highest number of blog hits ever, along with endorsements from both Girlonthenet and Alison Tyler. For me personally, it doesn’t get much better than that. Then, yesterday, I also got a lovely email from a reader who, I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t have realised was in the readership demographic for this kind of blog at all.

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Writing Process Blog Hop Tour

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Kristina Lloyd asked if I’d like to join in with a literary blog hop, and because I found her answers really interesting, and because ostensibly this blog was always supposed to be a home for my fiction writing, I said yes. Plus, I’m always keen to join in with anything which serves as a reminder that erotica isn’t just a synonym for erotic romance, so here goes:

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The Delicious Torment – A review

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Alison Tyler and I agree on a crucial point: that it’s important to do things properly, especially when it comes to sex. At the start of her last novel, Dark Secret Love, she says:

I’m hoping to paint the proper picture. I want you to know the way the wood felt under my bare feet. I want you to be able to trace a cut-crystal whiskey glass with your fingertips, to feel the sting of a slap and feel the rising blush.

With erotica more than any other genre, I think, the details are important. A single ill-chosen word can squick the reader; for me personally, even the cover can be a turn off.

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