5 Reasons Why You Should Write Erotica

Why you should be writing erotica...

1. Personal Health

Writing down your desires and allowing your thoughts to run wild may wake you up to desires you didn’t know you had. It also gives you a better sense of how to express yourself so you can tell partners about your own fantasies. Giving yourself a chance to go crazy in a totally safe space is good for your sexual and mental health.

If you aren’t comfortable writing a blog yet, writing erotica doesn’t necessarily need to be a public affair. If you want, you can make a journal or an electronic file where you write down all of your naughty fantasies. Even if you do publish some works, it’s a good idea to remind yourself that some can be kept private. That way you don’t limit yourself based on what you’re comfortable with making public. No matter how much you share, or don’t share, taking the time to write down your thoughts and feelings about anything, sex included, will greatly benefit your mental health.

2. Learn New Things

There’s this age-old rule about writing to “write what you know.” I hate that rule. I think it’s awful. I don’t think there would be many good books if we all tried to write books that only involved related to our own life experiences. Pornography and erotica are a place of fantasy and letting go, not restricting your ideas based to the things you’ve done personally. Of course, learning about things you haven’t personally experienced might require some research! It might sound weird when I say that if you want to write erotica, you better like sex. Lots of people like sex. I mean, you better like watching a lot of porn and reading a lot of erotica for research purposes. In addition to reading a lot to learn how a general story works, you also need to make sure that your sex scenes are exciting and fresh. We need new things that spike our interest and make our pulse race. So make sure you’re constantly finding new ways to be creative. If that means experimenting in the bedroom, go for it. If that means watching or reading a lot of porn, that’s just as good.

3. Find Your Voice

You have your own unique experiences, memories, and ways of viewing the world. If you’re a highly confident person, you might have thought of sharing these thoughts and ideas with others already. If sharing your own creations makes you nervous, finding the strength to put your ideas out there will be an incredibly rewarding experience.

If you’ve thought of publishing your erotica, you probably aren’t a particularly shy person to begin with. Of course, everyone is different. Maybe you’ll live a glorious double life where you sometimes shed your introversion and bare it all on the internet. Regardless of who you are during your day-to-day life, you can find joy in sharing your voice with the world. However, erotica requires a different type of bravery than other genres. In a society which stifles talk of sexuality and pleasure, it can be nearly impossible to find your voice.

Writing erotica requires you to know yourself sexually — whatever that means to you — and be comfortable with that identity. Your characters do not need to perform acts that you yourself would find pleasurable, but you need to feel comfortable and confident discussing things that reveal something intimate about your own view on sexuality. Finding this confidence and comfort in your writing and day-to-day life will inevitably make you more confident in the other areas of your life. The ability to use a pseudonym to protect your own identity on the internet allows you to keep your life as an erotic writer secret, even though it will benefit you greatly.

4. That Side Hustle Tho

Erotica is extremely in demand. Other genres might come and go in popularity, but sex sells and always has. Of course, sub-genres and types of content do wax and wane with popularity. You’ll need to stay up-to-date on the genre, but you don’t need to worry about the potential for readers. If you put dedication into finding readers and sharing your writing, you will find people who want to read it. Whether you write short and smutty works or longer stories with lots of sexy elements, people will definitely be interested in reading it.

The opportunity to self-publish on Amazon has created an amazing stepping-off point for lots of writers. Not only is there the opportunity to put your own work out there, there is also the chance to potentially earn income from doing so. Of course, Amazon takes a fairly large cut of whatever you sell. If you can, finding a way to publish your works through your own means will provide you with much more profit, but it will also be much more difficult to accumulate readers. There’s also several publishers who are looking for erotica of all sub-genres, especially short stories for compilation novels.

However, I’ve come across the misconception that anyone can write a smutty story or two and make a decent amount of money on Amazon. No matter what kind of writing you want to do, erotica or otherwise, it will take effort and motivation if you want to publish it with hopes for a profit. Writing for the sake of writing is a beautiful thing filled with creativity and joy. Writing as a career or as a serious side hobby takes perseverance and effort.

5. The Sexiest Way to Become a Social Media Guru

On the other side of that coin, publishing your erotica will give you a chance to develop your social media skills. The days of successful reclusive writers are long gone, especially for new writers working to establish themselves. You’ll need to be fluent in Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, a blogging site, YouTube, or whatever else you plan on using. There are lots of resources out there to help you understand how to reach maximum readership and how to get the most out of your posts.

All the advice I’ve heard suggests to put more effort into fewer social media accounts. At one point I was trying to post regularly on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, and WordPress. Needless to say, that did not always work out, as I was easily overwhelmed by the amount of posting that would need to happen on a daily or weekly basis. I’ve now cut down to few social media accounts and find that it’s much easier to keep track of all of this.