On the Search for an Artist

I'll admit I prefer to keep things among friends. It isn't that I don't like strangers or big corporations, but helping out a friend is important to me. So I've been pushing myself to remember all the artists that I know that might want to do some work for me with my determination to get some collections published this year.

It's an interesting thing, trying to find an artist. One option is in college and likes that I have a bunch of ideas and I am open to her insight on how to put them together. I just think I know where my strengths lie. I love art, I want to see it put together nicely, but I also know that I might not be the best judge of how that is done. She also let me know what her strengths are, which makes me like her better.

Anyone who isn't afraid to share where the weaknesses are is pretty great in my book. So I started a search for someone else who is more for drawing and less graphics for the next part of my search.

Somehow another name fell into my lap along with a sketch by the artist my friend was talking up. I just have to see how he feels about working with an erotica writer. Could be the start of something great.

My head is overflowing when I start to consider the art aspects. I need covers for each of the collections I'm planning - three at the moment - and also I'd love to get a new piece for my bio. I want these to be the best I can afford, but also patronize the people close to me who want to do this kind of work.

Then it's just about decisions to make the best fits for the projects at hand. But artwork really isn't easy to put together for a writer. I'll admit that I have a bit of talent when it comes to art, but also it's been years since I did anything with that. It's sad, since my high school art teacher once thought I could major in art. How different things might have been - if I were the illustrator looking for an author to partner with.

I remind myself I can't be the master of every talent, and look again for someone whose first passion is in the artistic imagery rather than the written word to portray the covers and other artwork I might need in my work.

Better to spend the rest of my time editing, rather than trying to put together a picture. It's my hope that the fans will want me writing something else, rather than waiting for my to make my own artwork. Perhaps if I get inspired I'll manage that, too, one day.

Until then I need an artist or two.

Gratuitous

Gratuitous is a word that a lot of people hide behind when they want to censor some kind of activity, whether it is sex or violence or anything else. Me? I'm not really a fan of gratuitous religion, but that doesn't get the same kind of attention.

Sex and violence, on the other hand, warrant all kinds of rules and regulations. I don't want your story if it has gratuitous violence - you know, anything that doesn't move the plot forward. I understand that a physical altercation can be just about the action, but often what leads up to it and the people who express their emotions in that manner are what needs to be shown with that end. Sex is an expression of a lot of different things, and again makes the people real.

These are two pillars at the core of our makeup. The drive for sex and procreation cannot be separated from the human condition. There are books and studies and who knows what other evidence to explain this, but if people don't have sex, people won't exist after very long.

Does that mean we have to weave it into every single thing we say and do? Maybe. Television, books, radio, even anecdotes from daily lives revolve around sex. We have innuendo and other not so subtle devices to insert it into our daily lives. It might make us crass or rude to admit it, but why are we so ashamed of sex? We're human. Sex drives us.

Oh, wait, let's insert that gratuitous - or not so gratuitous - religion again. All of a sudden our basic drive for sex is immoral. We have rules against sex outside of marriage, sex before marriage, sex with yourself, sex with anyone but that one person you marry. And these rules are absolute and in direct opposition with what our evolved drive for sex tells our minds to think.

Books and movies and all the other media use sex and violence to maintain drama. Drama is how you hold the audience's attention. It's one reason most of us fall asleep during documentaries they'll show you in school. There are trees and somehow the only action is ants crawling across the screen. Unless you're an ant fiend, it just doesn't do it for most of us. We crave drama, tension, conflict.

We mirror what we see in our lives, what we feel in our hearts, to create these plot lines. Sometimes it seems like they're all hopping into bed together. Sometimes it seems like another character just ended up dead. Remember when the soap operas dominated daytime television and they just couldn't figure out more ways to keep that tension high? We've replaced it with unscripted dramas we call "reality TV" that are actually nothing like reality. We freely admit this, and watch them anyway.

Not everyone chooses to watch this kind of entertainment. It's a choice. I recently met someone who said he didn't want to watch anything on television with sex or murder because he wanted to fill his life and his mind with the things he wanted more of - happiness and inspiration and other good things. His solution was to turn  off the television. While he explained his opinion, I felt in no way pressured to do the same. He never said I was immoral or anything else by enjoying those shows.

I try to remember him when I see all the other people touting immorality on screen, but it's difficult. I recently read an essay by a Christian woman who writes murder mysteries and watches all the crime shows, but hates that they all have sex together. She wants a cut and dried version with only the facts of the murders to take her on, without the characters that so many of us find intriguing.

Of course I'd be against those who are against gratuitous sex as an erotica writer, right? It's not that I'm for putting a sex scene in every novel or that I think everyone who might get close to sex should have it in the stories. But sometimes, it's necessary. That's who the person is. It is in our society and our lives. How deeply a writer delves into the sex is at the discretion of the writer (producer, director, etc).

And as a writer, I listen to the characters. Some of them want nothing more than to end up in bed together. Others run away at the prospect. At times those sex scenes dominate my story, and in another book they will be nothing but footnotes.

I think I need to stop letting those essays and blog posts and other outlets get to me. As long as we're telling stories, there will be sex and violence woven throughout, some gratuitous and some integral, and there will be arguments on both sides about which is which.

As for me, I'll be writing both kinds. Because sometimes it's just too fun not to.

Smashwords - Censored.

But the problem is how it's done. No, wait, the problem is that it is done.

Publishing is a lot of things. You can call it the part where a manuscript is sent through the traditional houses. You can call it the part where a writer uses a service to put their words in a form for others to read, be it through Smashwords or CreateSpace or through their own site. You can call it the form where we write words on a wall.

At least on my wall nobody will censor what I say. And it isn't even about my opinion of the words - it's that I want the right to say what I think ought to be said. I'm afraid once they say no to one thing it will be a slippery slope until we can't say much at all.

I know it's always up to the particular site about what can and cannot be expressed. I definitely want it all labeled properly so the unwary won't stumble across things accidentally. Whether it is erotica or slash fiction or even complete nonsense - we should all have the option to say what we want. Free speech, right?

Then again, no one gives backlash to sites who do not wish to cater to certain kinds of messages. The problem here is that someone else is saying what can and can't be done at another site. [A little like SOPA, except here it isn't the government involved but the bank.]

If PayPal is going to try to throw its weight around this way, is the next step to stop allowing purchases through its services for sites that put questionable (by their standards) up for free? I saw a follow-up that says that content might be allowed but not as the main theme because of all the uproar on Twitter.

Twitter is powerful. Do not mess with the Twitter machine.

I'm still waiting to see the next step. It bothers me as an erotica writer that I cannot publish everything I write because of moral objections, whether it be to telling stories through sex that some religious types object to completely or the specific niche not being allowed through censorship.

What do you think?