A total badass entrepreneur friend of mine recently posted the question ‘What Would Make Up Your One Big Juicy Life?’. They are a Creative Mindset Coach, and I have the highest possible respect for their drive, passion and energy. I’ve watched them build their business over the past year and have been completely inspired, so thought I would try to answer their very, very difficult question, and answer honestly.
I want to write for a living. I can write now, in fact, I am doing so (getting a bit meta Frankie- get back to the point). But I have to also manage my day job and other hobbies (I paint, and dance, and read, and then routinely run out of time…).
It would be possible for me to write full time if I drastically changed my standard of living (the day job is relatively lucrative compared to average projected debut novelist pay). I’m not willing to compromise mine or my family’s day-to-day in that way, the risk is too great at the moment what with the pandemic and all.
So what I really want is to be as financially secure and as risk-mitigated as I am now but spending the nine or so hours a day I work writing instead.
What I want to write…is porn. Adventure erotica, smut, naughty stories, whatever it warms your cockles to call it, I want to write hot sex between all kinds of people in all kinds of circumstances.
I love it because it’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s more educational than you think and takes more effort than you’d expect. It’s a challenge. It connects me to communities of people I’d never meet usually. And, most of all, I really do believe it helps people.
How narcissistic, thinking I could help people have better sex by writing a story?!
Genuinely- so much sex education comes from porn, why should this platform be any different? Why shouldn’t someone pick up a smutty book (say, The Jade Eagle, off the top of my head) and read through someone’s first time experiencing anal sex, and as a result for their own first time, instead of using spit use real lubricant intended for the purpose? Why shouldn’t they read over two characters using a prompt list to cover kink likes and dislikes and do something similar in their own life?
We are so beaten into shame about sex, nudity, kinks, intimacy and romantic feelings that any discussion about them can really take a lot of effort. Despite nearly all media push, push, pushing us to view the world through a sexual lens and to frame heteronormative romance as the highest of goals. So much so that a lot of my own personal early discussions around what I wanted devolved into fights. We simply don’t learn the right language. And forget picking it up from watching porn on the internet, just no. Most of the male-based characters shouldn’t say half the rubbish they’re scripted to and the female-based characters don’t get to say anything most of the time.
(There are exceptions, OMGYes and MakeLoveNotPorn are notable examples of a fight against the mainstream)
The reason I write action/adventure tales specifically is to hopefully drive more open readership. It’s no secret that bodice-rippers in particular have been a bastion of escapism for a long time, stuffed in the bottom shelves of the bookcase with the Jilly Coopers and a half-embarrassed blush. The rise of e-readers has also absolutely widened the market in the stealthy consumption of good, healthy romps by all comers, so to speak. However, in this post-50 Shades world we inhabit I want to see us move to the next level. I want dirty, sexy content for the generation who grew up with Marvel-style epic storylines and cross-overs, Fast-and-Furious chase sequences, Oceans-Eleven bait and switches, and Now-You-See-Me intrigue. I want explicit consent as much as I want explicit content. I want safety and sanity to be an expectation, not an exception. I want content warnings so people can read for their tastes without fear of material they don’t want to be party to. I want a wide variety of material for all the flavours and tastes out there. And if that includes aliens and shapeshifters, then absolutely go for it, Men in Black was a blockbuster too.
I have a few friends who work in education, and we privately have a few laughs over how much time we spend teaching some things many kids will never use again, and how little time we spend teaching them how to relate to people. How to identify themselves. How to use literal words for their own body parts (I was once told to stand in the corner of the classroom for using the word vagina. I have one, it isn’t rude or inappropriate. It’s a clinical term and I will die on that hill.)
Could we live in a more well-adjusted society if the wider discussions around sex and intimacy were more easily navigated? Could the creeping, sticky shame of toxic masculinity be fought back more effectively if the world at large had a better vocabulary for their feelings, wants and needs?
(Also, please don’t for a second think my aro/ace folx aren’t included in this- yes, I write sex, but I am thinking of you too and want to include a realistic lived experience in that arena without shoe-horning it in for tokenism. Aromatic and asexual experiences of sex and romance are just as real and valid as alloromantic and allosexual communities and I would love to see more representation to help me learn the language and understand their views in the way I understand my own.)
All this gets a little aspirational, I don’t honestly think erotica can save the world.
I do think the wider consumption of more inclusive and diverse erotica can- maybe -help very slightly nudge a few people into having better tools with which to interact with each other.
Which might help them understand each other more.
Which might, possibly, maybe, save one person’s world.
So, my One Big Juicy Life Writing Porn is based on being the change I want to see.
There are a million amazing erotica authors moving mountains daily to send out the sort of content I describe, and I have no pretence to their experience or skill, but I love what I write. I really do. I write books I want to read; I share bits with friends and laugh till I cry and confuse my characters with real people all the time.
I would love for you to enjoy my books. I would love my books to give you a few hours escapism, a good investment into the spank bank, and if they helped even one of you navigate a discussion to explore a new thing you want but hadn’t the means to express, then I will count every sleepless night, crying fit, and plot-hole-patching despair-driven kitchen-floor-collapsing biscuit-binge as well worth it.
The Jade Eagle is coming out one way or another soon folks, the proverbial flag-bearer of the slew of filth in my brain. Let me know what you think of it?
Love, Frankie xx