If you are like me, every year post Halloween (and my birthday which happens to fall on October 3oth… amazingly every year on the same date!) you feel the ramp up of the holidays, which I call the “holidaze,” heavy, heard and thrusting into your life until the New Year. There’s so much to do, even when you have whittled your gift buying list down to just an essential few and visiting ever fewer places. Really, COVID has nothing really at all to do with the fact that I simply do not want to be out and about in the hustle and bustle this time of year.
So, what does any of this mean to the erotic writer? Are we exempt from the holidaze sitting in our garrets churning out our fictions for barely enough money to afford a good-sized phallic candy cane?
I can tell you from first-hand experience that the clients I write for tend to slow down in their needs for articles, blogs, reviews and interviews this time of year. By mid-November (when I write this) I am pretty much full up for any work until the New Year. Also, quite frankly, I feel my energy for fiction writing slowing down, the twinkly lights and yummy cookie smells (and the Thanksgiving bird feast looming) distracting me from thinking up new naughties.
I fight this malaise every year. As much wanting to be prepared for what’s coming in the New Year, with AVN and the various XBIZ events happening in January, as wanting to shore up some future work, I need to stay on the ball. Certainly, I will give myself a week off between Christmas and New Year, or at least slow down a bit, but I’d like to have my proverbial ducks in a row for when the holidaze pass and we are into the drag of months like February and March and I have yet to fully pay off the credit card bills from what I spent during the holidaze.
Yes, even if you have whittled your gift buying list to just the essential few.
As the old saying warns, it’s best to have your groceries bought well before you are hungry. I’d advise, enjoy whatever holidaze you do, delve deep into those traditions, amass friends and family around you. But don’t forget the work, and this is true for whatever work you do, not only naughty scribbling.
If you have some writing projects you have put off, maybe the New Year is when you should tackle them. If you haven’t heard from or reached out to a client, old, current or potential, set the post-holiday time for doing so. A reassessment of your writing goals also might be in order. I’m not the biggest proponent of resolutions, save for making a resolution banning me from making any more resolutions. But a little planning now, best you can, for after the crazy times might serve you well.
In the past two weeks I have been humbled/lucky or maybe my talent won out (nah, it’s not that!) seeing quite a few pieces published. From erotica, to an essay about a recent survey on the good and bad or pornography (I’ll let you guess how the survey skewed, for or against and who was most at fault) to a satirical/naughty/scifi jaunt, to my usual round of blogs, and selling a bunch more of the various children’s books I am the writer of, I managed to get up or publish a bunch ‘o stuff in the past few weeks, all of it I am very proud of.
Now, I have no idea if you write more than one kind of thang. If you do, wonderful. Knock yourself out. Furrow ahead. Have at it. All my best to you. But, if you are like me and happen to work a more diverse oeuvre, than I’d say go forth and multiply, publish as much divergent stuff as you can. Enjoy your varied output. Writing this way has done nothing but make me a better writer and has saw me gain the small amount of traction I have.
Again, not every writer dips his or her toe in different depths of water. And again, this is perfectly fine. You can’t push yourself to write stuff that’s just not in you. Ok, strike that… you can push yourself, and in doing so you might find some things about your writing that surprises you. Mainly, that you can push yourself to try other kinds of writing. But unless you are open to trying or might be one the gifted few scribes who does everything well–and I ain’t one of them by a long shot–you’ll probably gravitate time and again to that which you like or are most comfortable with.
Which again, is perfectly fine and suits many a writer.
But if you have tickled the idea of giving some type of writing a try that you have never tried or if you find stuff is pouring out of you that you never expected, I say go with it. This pours-out-of-you-that-you-never-expected stuff usually comes to writers who have never tried erotica but are suddenly taken with getting some wild and naughty words down, surprising themselves that they have the ability to write so dirty.
I see this all the time with budding erotica writers.
(To this end, if you want to read a fantastically naughty tale that covers this kind of ‘oh-my-God-I-can’t-be-thinking-this-but-it’s-changing-my-career’ kind of story, I refer you to Ann Rice, writing as Ann Rampling, and her book Belinda.
I say, let the stuff come, whatever it is. Different than what you usually write, by all means, Same, sure. A little to the left of your usual, ok. I just know that I have found some success and a sure amount of pleasure in diversity. And there are plenty of places that do indeed published cross-genre work.
Remember, you cannot be it, whatever it is that you want to be, if you restrict it.
Presently I’ve been ‘wrastling’ with a book that I’ve tried writing on and off for years. In unearthing what I had for it, I found as much good stuff as bad, pages of passages I now cringe reading as much those that come to sing anew with a few tweaks. Rereading and reworking the manuscript has also inspired me to write new stuff for the story, and for the first time in a long while, I feel I might be able to finish the book.
As I advised in another column, sometimes it’s a good idea to put something away that you may have been spinning your mental wheels over. Sure, there is something to be said for slogging through, to muscling the words, to just strapping yourself to your desk and not standing up and away from it until you have ejaculated a thousand words. This is where the actual work of your writing job comes in.
Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay
But there are equally those opuses (is it opus’i’?) we do well to put away for a while, but for the point, I am making here, get back to after a while.
Sometimes we do not have the skill just yet to tackle the thing as well as it needs. Sometimes (as was the case with me as the piece I was trying to work was a memoir), we need perspective, more time away from when the events occurred. Other times, we need to take ourselves from the middle of something to see it clearer, and yes, we even must miss it a little bit.
Don’t be surprised, though, that in looking back, you realize you do not need this stuff anymore, and you take to emptying the old closet (or desktop file) for good. This is the other side of the coin with stepping back and giving something another look; you maybe have hidden this old stuff away for a perfect reason and never got around to throwing it away. Sometimes what you find you said a hell of a lot better in another way, at another time. There is something to be said for purging that which has stuck in the back of your mind, on your desktop or in your nightstand pad for years that you simply will never use or have tackled better in another way.
Image by congerdesign from Pixabay
I don’t have a clear-cut answer of how to deal with your old dreck exactly, or even when you should. But I do know that sometimes there is value in giving the unfinished, the cast-off, the stuff that has aggravated you into submission, another try after a time. Just as you can reread one of your most favorite books and come to some new conclusion about them when rereading it years later, or have a different reaction to a song or movie decades after your first encountered it, so to can you have a different reaction to something you attempted to write years before.
I am not part of the cult of social media personality; I have never been. I do not really know how Facebook, Instagram, etc., work nor have I ever wanted to. And I am truly blind to why Facebook is switching its name to Meta and what that word even means (as well as what the hell “Metaverse” means). But as I have too often seen in the insidious recent rush of technology, I fear there might be some infiltration of that which I do not know nor engage in to my business of scribbling naughty little words across papyrus with my stylus under candlelight.
I’m not a Luddite, but I do grow a bit squirrely round the edges now in my 6th decade with anything that seems to have the potential to create ever more divisions between folks. My great friend, podcast co-host, and a writer you should be reading right now (and contributor as well to this wonderful sexpert-a-verse), M. Christian, is the futurist I go to when I come up against the world changing in ways I do not understand. Asking him about the conversion of Facebook to Meta and what meta is in general, Chris pretty much reiterated what I thought I knew in that there are folks who enjoy an online experience, no matter what it is they are experiencing, as much or more so than they do going out and about in the world to experience whatever it is they like to experience. What Chris warned, and something we have all come to see for sure, is if one immerses oneself with one population, one news source, one religion, one whatever-it-is, then one can get rather indoctrinated in one set way of looking at things. I don’t care where you come down politically (or if you are like me, you don’t come down politically at all) or what your belief system is; I agree with Chris, one can all too easily spin down a rabbit hole one might never see oneself free from the more one goes looking for that damn rabbit.
In the ‘new’ Meta world that Mark Zuckerberg seems to be morphing his old Facebook into, it seems folks who like to be online will be able to dive even deeper online. The question then becomes, if being online is so rewarding, easy to facilitate, and keeps us inside where we already want to stay anyway (pandemic or not), why would those predisposed to being online ever want to interact with the non-online world? And extrapolating from this—and for my private bread and butter—I wonder if anyone in the Meta world or even tickling into it from time to time will want to read my naughty little stories, or any stories in general. Will what Chris and I labor at and many more writers like us try to make their living from being soon regarded as an antiquated static resource, not at all interesting to the generation living solely online?
In a world where you can set your avatar to any appearance (and well protect your actual appearance in the process), speak a language you don’t normally but can easily translate, buy goods and services from an exchange of something other than the coin of the realm, and never leave your Barcalounger when doing all of this, the digital world you could come to live can all too quickly become one of your own making.
Will anybody want the fictions or anyone else’s makings if one is Meta?
Okay, so here are 9 Places (I didn’t want to be cliché and give you ten) Where You Can Get Your Erotic Stories Published And Get Paid.
Drum roll please!
I can’t say what these might be like when you click to explore any of these places. Of course, guidelines and acquisition needs change as much at erotica publishers as at any other house. But what I have tried to do with these nine is present you with places I know that accept erotic fiction on a regular basis. Or at least ones I have worked with that I can vouch for.
So…Good luck.
1.) Bust Magazine’s “One-Handed Read” section features short fiction (under 850 words) for the discerning horny female. Send your submissions as an MS word attachment, with your email containing your author info to [email protected], to the attention of the section “One-Handed Read” section.
2.)Penthouse Letter’s and Penthouse itself still accept pornographic fiction. The stories usually need to be about 3000 words. To [email protected]
3.) Cleis Press is a venerable publishing house for erotica.
4.) Berlinable is a new erotic house, with a particular (but not only) interest in erotica centered in Berlin, Germany.
5.) Circlet Press, a house that I have been published by, are always on the lookout for fiction for their various anthologies. Circlet marries the erotic with genre fiction, like fantasy, sci-fi-fi, and horror.
6.) Erotica For All is a unique one. It is a website where you can post non-fiction directly related to something you have already published (at the time of posting here, what you’ve had published need not be all that old). You are not getting paid, as you will in any of the above, but it is a great way to promote your work with a quick essay about the theme or book you have just put out, with a snippet of that book below the essay. For instance, I wrote a short essay about how women don’t have to be leather-clad and wield a whip to still be a femdom lady; then, I included a story from my just-published short story collected called No Whip, No Problem. Get the idea?
7.) Xcite Books is another I have published books with. They are UK-based and take stories for anthos as well as for one-off shorter single-story books.
8.) My buddy Jim over at Wordwooze accepts all kinds of books that he puts out as ebooks as he does audio. He has published erotica as well as a one-act play collection from me.
9.) SinCyr is another house I can’t say enough about… and not only because they have been smart enough to publish me often. They publish a consistent batch of anthologies during any given year. I’d advise checking them out as well.
So, what are you still standing around reading this column for?! Get out, get published, stop bugging me already!
If I ‘ve told you once, I‘ve told you a thousand times; whatever you do, donotburn abridge. Plant on a smiley face, be as diplomatic as you must, stamp down your true feelings, but don’t cut anybody down to size or bad mouth anybody to anybody else. If you don’t want to work with someone ever again, then just don’t work with them. Stay off Twitter or Facebook if your only goal is to spread ill feelings—your missives and mockings are sure to be heard as much, or even more so, than your praise.
As Patrick Swayze’s “Dalton” instructs the amateur bouncers under his care in the not-so-subtle homoerotic movie, Road House, “Be nice.” So, be nice.
Road House / Silver Pictures
Let me give you a recent example from my professional naughty writing life why I say this…
I sent out a query to a publisher this week. In my experience, this was a new house. I knew of one of the imports that they had just bought, someone who had published a few stories of mine over a decade ago, and this is how I got hip to this. Again for me, new publisher. Reading over their updated guidelines (Something else I would strongly advise doing, sending an editor or publisher what they indicate they need from guidelines that might have been published a year ago could find you submitting stale stories.) I came to the conclusion that this house might just be perfect for a short story collection I had been trying to place.
Lo and behold: when I received a quick email back from the acquisitions editor (I found out she was the CEO of the house as well), she told me she had not only heard of me (which certainly made me feel good) but that we had met.
I don’t recall meeting the lady, although when I searched pictures of her online, she did look familiar. But imagine if, somewhere along the line, I had slagged her off, been impolite, or had been a major headcase to the person whose imprint she had bought. I am not a headcase, and I am always nice, but here’s a perfect example of your ‘tude traveling far because, really, the sex writing world is a small one after all.
I have no idea of the down and dirty specifics of other businesses. But I have interviewed enough folks for the ghostwriting jobs that I do, folks working in other industries than the adult world, to know that they too advise the “no bridge-burning ethos.” In this day and age, where we have the infinite facility to get our opinion out there, as quickly as we like, I caution a little common sense, a little grown-up considering and say: “Just cause you can Postie, don’t mean you should.”
Image by Yaroslav Shuraev
Whatever your opinion about Tom, Dick or Mary, that magazine you once wrote for, that editor that almost drove you to drink, I’d say keep it yourself. If you want to share ’em, do so with your nearest and dearest. I shoot the proverbial shit with only one other writer and good friend who, like me, keeps his mouth shut. We get to jawing about the smut writing business and caution each other with what we learn on our own, but we never “tell tales out of school,” keeping our business our business.
Go forth and do what you will the way you will. I can’t stop you. But if you take one thing from any of my writing columns here (beyond the fact that I am a sexy, well-hung, incredibly talented sage of writing advice), please realize that there are times when you are served best just shutting the fuck up.
This is the way I’ve often found it in the freelance writing game. I can go for a whole month with no gigs, starting to worry about scrounging for the pennies, and then BAMMO (just like Batman), I have almost too much work to negotiate.
It’s feast or famine around my neck of the woods more often than not, and presently I find myself feasting.
But it won’t last. Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to declare that I will, at least this time, learn a few things (“Sure sure, Ralph,” I hear you say as you pay my head knowingly).
Here are my Top 5 Lessons To Learn About Writing Work When You Have Lots Of Work
1.) Save money.
This is one you’d think I’d learn time and again, but alas, I get a few coins a’janglng, and they either fly out of my finger to pay past bills, or I treat myself to my usual round of coke and escorts (ok, that’s a joke). But I do have a propensity for spending too much money on books, toys (and no, not even the vibrating kind), and records. I have to remember to save some money as I make some money, so I have some money for those times I’m not making all that much money.
2.) Keep looking for work.
Even inundated, trying to find my footing (and time to write) under a tsunami of work, I need to keep my eyes and ears open for more of it. None of us should become complacent when we get a little breathing room, suddenly become lazy thinking that we don’t need to keep looking as intensely as we always have for jobs, or slack off keeping in touch with an old client who may have the promise of work down the line. Sure, you need to pay attention to the job at hand (which will lead me to my third point in a second), but we always need to keep our minds on getting more.
3.) To that work at hand?
Work it hard as you do all other work but remember, to schedule it around everything you are already doing. This is my biggest weakness; I have a terrible mind (not a ‘beautiful one’ at all) for scheduling, keeping to calendars, prioritizing. But if a mountain comes suddenly sliding into you, you probably are going to have to find a way to start climbing it. Which leads to…
4.) Don’t forget the work you already have.
This isn’t so easy to do, especially if the work you already might be doing is something you’ve been at for a long time, or it pays you less than the new work coming in (which so often happens as older work might be stuff you priced out way back before you had grown your reputation and skills to where they are now). But this older work needs to be considered and kept to as much as the new.
5.) Keep on the new employer for more/new work/building your relationship.
Whoever has come to lay some new stuff in your lap, or whomever you have courted to get it, they are going to need to be stroked a little, at least at the beginning First and foremost, you do this by doing a great job…which, you should be doing all the time anyway. But for a first-time client, I go a little above and beyond, keep the communication fluid and consistent, so they can get me pretty much get me as they want me (at least in the beginning), and stroke the client as much as I can without having to throw-up in my mouth too often.
All too soon, I’ll be in the ditch again, scrambling and worrying about work. For now, though, with a bit of a surplus of it, I need to keep my head and maybe learn a few valuable lessons, so there isn’t such a deep difference between the busy times and the quiet.
The question is: will I take these five tips to heart? Your guess is as good as mine.
It’s undoubtedly been a wacky, weird road to travel down these past couple decades for those of us involved in sex writing. Be one a scribbler of naughty stuff or a publisher of those scribblings; the goalposts have been “slip, sliding, away,” as Paul Simon would say, over what to write and where to publish during these heady and hearty days of digital. And if anybody gives you a clear-cut definitive answer on where things are headed, even within the next couple months, ignore them; they truly have no clue.
Jeff Bezos, CEO and President of Amazon
Yes, eBook publishing was a massive change to the landscape and a good one for those of us writing niche or genre stuff. I didn’t start publishing my stuff in earnest until I met the wonderful Jean Marie Stine of Renaissance E Books and found that not only could I publish, I could get paid for the naughty stuff that was pouring out of me that I knew mainstream publishers did not want (this was before Fifty Shades of Grey hit and every house everywhere suddenly wanted to publish erotica). The little risk/solid reward model of eBook publishing made perfect sense to me, and I got up a whole bunch of titles with Jean, which led to me gaining some traction (and confidence) to search out other houses and jump-start my career.
eBooks are still out there, but I dare say another and probably the most significant change to the market—to all markets actually—is Amazon.
Good and bad.
For publishers?
Let’s take the good first.
Amazon provides exposure of a scale no publisher’s already hard-working distribution department could beat.
The bad?
Suddenly, Amazon provides exposure of a scale no publisher’s already hard-working distribution department could beat. Being the biggest player, Amazon set rules everyone had to follow, or one could not get their books up on this depository of stuff.
Early on (and still happening), there were guidelines (lots of us saw them as restrictions) set up across the Amazon platform that quickly found, and pretty much deleted, any erotica that did not play by Amazon’s rules. Those authors who wrote fetish stuff, especially age-play fantasy stuff (which was exactly what my first books with Jean Marie were) were set under deep scrutiny, with books excised from Amazon lists at the drop of a hat.
The problem here was that there were no concessions made for the grey areas (like adult consensual age play or fiction about ‘water sports’) in the initial flagging and mass exodus of lots of titles Amazon thought exploitative. Yes, they have gotten better with not just jettisoning stuff whole cloth, pretty much lightening-up on us smut scribes, but still there are lots of restrictions on the site/store that are not so easy to decipher.
Hey, it’s their sandbox, they can make the rules, I have no problem with that. But Amazon’s reasons for jettisoning titles, in the best of instances, still seem somewhat arbitrary.
For writers?
The good.
Amazon worked hard (I will give credit where credit is due) to create a template where just about anyone can upload a book, its cover, and price (and Amazon helps price books as well if you are ignorant in this area) and set up their own ‘shop’ to start selling directly. For the most part, and within the restrictions mentioned above, erotica authors could technically ‘publish’ without having to spend all that much money (or any at all) to do so.
The bad.
Amazon worked hard (I will give credit where credit is due) to create a template where just about anyone can upload a book, which means, now, a pro erotica writer, who may have worked for years building his or her talent, skill, and business acumen, is pretty much competing on a level playing field with amateurs.
Is this good or bad? You decide. But it does mean there is a lot more stuff for the picking out there and a wide range of ‘quality.’
(It reminds me what you find when you got out for an evening at your local café and catch an “Open Mike” night).
The Only Game In Town
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels
There is no dirty little secret here. Amazon works on a rather ‘transparent’ business model.
But it has become an only-game-in-town situation, and that usually scares the shit out of me; monopolies have always scared me and I don’t want only want one option when it comes to the ice cream flavors I can chose from.
And really, it means nothing much at all if somebody comes up to you and says, “I have published a book on Amazon.” Having a book up on the portal is about as unique as having an Instagram page these days.
I don’t have an Instagram page and have long since forgotten the short stories I self-published on Amazon.
Why?
I have a natural aversion to making money and becoming famous. That’s a joke.
Actually, as you have realized reading these columns, I abhor social media and figure just adding to the din of so many other-self-published sex scribes out there will just result in me spinning my metaphorical wheels.
If a publisher I am with puts my book on Amazon, (and pretty much everyone I have published with has), that’s their business. But I have long since given up the idea of putting stuff up there myself. My thoughts might change on this, but for now, I dance with the devil just about as much as I care to.
Should you publish on Amazon? Are they indeed the biggest, and best? I’d advise doing some research beyond my sage advice (not that I really gave you a thumbs up or down here) and figure how, and if, you want to get involved with Jeff Bezos baby.
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NINE TO ETERNITY is an anthology of science-fiction short stories edited and anthologized by M. Christian. NINE TO ETERNITY, features a whole bunch of other excellent writers, including Ralph Greco, M. Christian, Ernest Hogan, Emily Devenport, Cynthia Ward, Arthur Byron Cover, Jr., David Lee Summers, Jean Marie Stine, and the estate of Jody Scott, to make Nine To Eternity: A Science Fiction Anthology a memorable reading experience.
I just received an email acceptance and then the contract from a vanity press for one of the children’s books I wrote (my buddy illustrates them).
Yes, writers of naughty stuff can write other stuff as well. Even stuff 360 degrees from smut.
While this publishing house claimed that they are yards away from what anybody would ever come to consider to be a ‘vanity press,’ I quickly came to realize that this is exactly what they are. For a book that taps out at about 15 pages max. (granted with full-color illustrations) this ‘publisher’ (and I quote that word deliberately) was asking for over two thousand dollars from me, then promised to print the book, make copes, advertise… then they would proceed to take 50% of all profits the book made from any sales and sources. Sure, I get a bunch of author’s copies, and the company claimed they’d do their best to make my book bigger than Happy Potter, but with a vanity press, one has to realize the company already has made money from the author. If they can get the book to sell, that’s icing on the cake, but really why would further sales even really matter?
Besides, who has 2000 dollars?
Enough writers have fallen for this malarkey, if this company’s full roster is any gauge, and the little vanity press that doesn’t consider itself a vanity press turns a nice profit.
I politely demurred for the illustrator and me.
Before this offer, which I am now wise to, I was involved in a couple screw-the-author bait-and-switches. On a different level, so different I didn’t see the bilking coming until too late, I spent money, the publisher made a profit from me, leaving the sale of my book irrelevant.
You might find that you come upon a publisher who cannot pay your for a story that they want to include in an upcoming anthology. This, in and of itself, is not a red flag. Plenty of people get money up front for creating a book, but either don’t have the funds when it comes to paying writers or need to wait on the sale of the book to send royalties. I am usually sympathetic to someone just trying to get a book out that lots of times, I agree to have someone publish a story of mine in exchange for a PDF of the eBook or a contributor’s copy.
No problem there, if the terms are set before hand.
But in some cases, (and again I fell for this so don’t feel bad if you have), the publisher buys the story, or in one case a book of poetry of mine was published by a company far from my home country, and I was given the option to buy copies of the book at a ‘contributor’s price.’
Wow, thanks so much.
I could see if I wanted more than one copy of the book. In fact I’ve never asked for more than one copy of a book where I have not offered to pay for extras, plus postage. But charging me for one and offering it at a discount, so I feel I am getting something special?
Come on.
The there are markets like this one, Grandfalloon Magazine, where they not only sent me a bunch of contributors copies (at no cost to me) but have sent subsequent copies of the magazine (which is more like a book) I didn’t even have a story in. You can find them in the link above and if you do, tell them I sent you.
I never said you were going to get rich at this writer’s thing. But you don’t want to lose money. If you’re going to have a story appear in a book that’s going to see distribution (as I proposed in the last column when I spoke about anthologies), but you’re not being paid for it (or you will receive royalties on books sold), consider this a break-even proposition, at least.
Having a poem, story, article ‘out there’ gives it legs that writing and hiding it on your hard drive won’t. And if it doesn’t cost you money upfront to publish, then go for it, I say. When you are seduced into a pay-to-play scenario, you need to be very careful who you are playing with or not play at all. Because really, as I recall way back when I was attempting to be a never-was rockstar, you should never have to put up money for an agent or club owner to play for them as you should never do so for a publisher who wants to publish you.
Don’t let anyone play on your vanity that having a book published is the very best thing to happen to a writer.
Saying “NEXT”: When Fired From A Sex Writing Job, When Losing Your Fuck-Buddy, To Life In General
I lost a job today (well, by the time you read this, a few weeks may have gone by). I feel kinda shitty about it; I have to be honest. As much because I always need the work as the fact that I now, once again, doubt my abilities. There are a whole host of reasons why I failed to make a connection with this client, an adult toy site, and I can rationalize all I like. My contact, who has been aces with me all along, took lots of the blame herself, claiming miscommunication and her bosses not really laying out what they needed from the get-go, so she, in turn, couldn’t relate those exact needs to me. Still, I feel kinda icky.
But I know I need just to say “NEXT.”
This might just be the hardest lesson we come to as freelancers, and I don’t mean only freelance sex writers; this “NEXT” rule we could probably all learn to hone to a fine edge. By all means, I am not saying not to reflect on why something didn’t work out, not learn from mistakes you made, not to delve back into the well and consider your skills, but if you are not able to at least whisper a ‘next’ and flow past the rejection, you might just get too weighed down by that rejection.
Which I feel myself indeed slipping into even now as I write this. But writing, as it usually does for me, is therapeutic and helps me to work this all out.
image from luxstorm from pixabay
The good thing about moving forward is… you move forward. You set yourself in motion for something coming down the pike you can’t even predict. I’m not saying it will be better or worse if and when you find some other guy or girl to take the place of the fuck-buddy who no longer wants you, when you find another job beyond that employer who has fired you, that you will come to love the game anew when your chess club revokes your yearly membership. I’m just saying that if you’re able to say “NEXT” at those instances when you are rejected for whatever reason, you will be ready to snatch, grab and maybe even make a more robust pass at whatever is coming.
And something is always coming.
Another powerful aspect of the “NEXT” and certainly something I am feeling mostly here, even stronger than the rejection, is that I am no longer fence-sitting. In the two weeks, I was surfing the logistics of my new working assignment, had delivered and been paid for the work, I had an uneasy feeling that things were not so hunky-dory. You know how you can sense these things, right? Even in the face of my contact telling me she liked my work, I felt unease as the weeks passed with how long it was taking for the powers-that-be to get back to me when, in the first week, the work was coming fast and furious, and my contact was riding me a bit to get things done. I might no longer have the job, but I am no longer working this worry, this fence-sitting of “Is everything ok, or is it not?” that I seem to have been right on the money about.
I also made sure to thank my contact, assure her that she and I are all good (which we are), and to tell her that, if things change, if they want to give me another chance, I am here for further consideration. And I am. I don’t hold grudges or look to spank someone later (well, maybe in my bedroom play, but that’s another story). I know you can’t un-ring a bell, and I would say it’s a 99% certainty that I won’t hear back from her about another job or further work from her higher-ups, but I am indeed always open to have the discussion of working for anyone at any time. And, as I have mentioned one more than once in this sex writing column and plenty on my podcast Licking Non-Vanillawith M. Christian (a shameless plug I know, but as Chris writes stuff here, I figure why not?), you should never burn a bridge. I do indeed like the contact from this job that just fired me, I certainly want to keep in touch with her and don’t want her to feel bad about the news she had to deliver to me today. But who knows where she will go, if indeed other opportunities at her company will open up for me with her (again doubtful), if she might go someplace else where she might need me?
So, here I am today, feeling a little dejected but ok. I had to pen a new column, so here it is, and I thought maybe the lesson of saying “NEXT” was a good one to impart to you my struggling or maybe even entirely happy erotica writer.
