[SOLVED] Is Literotica the Right Place for Me? (It is)

[alohadave]

Maybe my writing is indeed valid.

Maybe I have to write whatever the fuck I want.

Yes to both.

However, knowing is not the same as feeling. I know that that I can and should write the way I write, and not how I think I should be writing, but it's social pressure and it's incredibly difficult to overcome that.

I may be projecting, but I feel like I've had similar thoughts as you regarding how long my stories should be. I go back and forth about it, feeling like there is something wrong with my ability to write because I cannot whip out 5-10k of text for a scene. I write spare and that's how I am.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

I don't think there's any such thing as a right place. At least, not if the word place means community rather than a literal set of coordinates on the globe somewhere. Any community is going to have people that are wrong for some of the other people, so there's pretty much always some amount of contortion required to 'fit', if that's the goal. Or else learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Best of luck either way.

In my experience, it's far more uncomfortable doing the contortion to fit rather than being uncomfortable. I won't be leaving any time soon as of yet. Am I booing myself off the stage before performing? Definitely, but I am not leaving this place without another try. I just feel like there are too many hidden rules about how stories must be; that's all.

It's very common advice in this forum, from a min/maxing viewpoint. This advice is based on stats that various people have worked on over the years. Make your story 2-3 Lit pages long (7-10k words) if you want to maximize your views and scores.

I have found this to not be true with my stories. I rarely make a story that is 5k words or longer (4 out of 42), and 2-3k is more typical for me. And, in my experience, shorter stories has not been the detriment implied by the advice to write longer.

I did some quick numbers on my stories. 42 published, 30 of 42 are 1 Lit page, 12 more than one page. 71% of my stories are one lit page (ranging from several 750 stories up to the limit of one page).

13 of 42 have an H. 30.9% of them. Of those H stories, 6 are one Lit page long, 46%.

What does this tell us about length of stories and success here? Nothing. I write to the category and my popular stories are ones that hit the tropes of the category they are in. Writing stories that people want to read in the categories they are in will give you success.

Alright. I'm going to apply pyrrhonism to this:

Who are the people saying this? How often has this been said? Has it been said often enough for it to stop being a common piece of advice and start to become gospel? Are these people still on top? Is this advice proven to be true? Is this advice proven to be false? Is there any survivorship bias to this? Do readers agree to that with their views and scores? How do we know readers are agreeing to it with the usual swipes Literotica does? Do these authors benefit in any way by parroting this advice over and over? Has this advice aged well or it hasn't?

By the way you've experienced it, which is similar to my experience, that common advice should be questioned.

As for the question "What does this tell us about length of stories and success here," I think there's something better: each author, and that includes me, should have their own definition of success in this platform. Maybe I'm preaching to the choir by saying this, but maybe I need to say it out loud so that I can hear it too.

Maybe Literotica isn't the right place for me. Maybe Literotica is precisely the place where I need to be, or must be.

A Lit page is around 3750 words (Some people have calculated to about 20,000 characters, text and spaces). When you compare that to 250 words on a printed page, that is 15 pages. So you can equate one Lit page to 15 pages in a book. Whether that helps or not, I don't know, but it is an explanation.

It only makes my headache worse.

Yes to both.

However, knowing is not the same as feeling. I know that that I can and should write the way I write, and not how I think I should be writing, but it's social pressure and it's incredibly difficult to overcome that.

I may be projecting, but I feel like I've had similar thoughts as you regarding how long my stories should be. I go back and forth about it, feeling like there is something wrong with my ability to write because I cannot whip out 5-10k of text for a scene. I write spare and that's how I am.

*Sigh*

Welcome to People Pleasers Anonymous. Pull up a chair.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

I wonder a lot if this is the right place for me. I know this a writers' thread, but the title just jumped out at me and I felt like replying.

I used to be a sex worker, I feel like I have an opinion that's relevant on a sex site, but people mostly look down on me and think I'm low class.

I guess it doesn't matter, I can come or go as I please, it doesn't matter what people think. But I don't always feel welcome here, and especially not in Chat.

Hey, it's fine. You're welcome here.

I will encourage you to post here if you think you have something else to add, maybe not as a writer, but as a misfit. You're not the only one who used to be a sex worker here either by the way.

 

[ElectricBlue]

And this is the issue I'm talking about: policing content. Have you read what I've written? They are all 18, and I don't even try to make them look younger, not because the guidelines tell me to fucking make sure they are 18, but because it makes ME, the author, uncomfortable.

My comment was meant generally, not reflecting your stories written as eighteen plus, more a comment on what "school girls" suggests to the wider community, which is what you're up against.

If I am reading you wrong and got triggered over nothing, then my apologies, but I started with that because it's the first reason I found out as to why I suddenly stopped publishing here, and why AH has made me publish less instead of more.

You read me as a policeman, which I'm not, merely pointing out Obvious 101 that Literotica has a hard policy line. A line which is easy to avoid if you age up characters and they've left school; more problematic when people insist on maintaining the age of their (younger) characters. It's that insistence that makes folk look sideways.

Keep in mind that probably half of the age policy threads come from people who are pushing the line, looking for ways to duck under it, so there's a natural cynicism. The other half are threads started by people genuinely seeking advice. I think you're the latter, but your posts are covering so much ground, it's difficult to respond coherently.

So far as shorter pieces are concerned - I love the discipline of the 750 word exercises, but they're definitely more for authors than readers (although you can still do very well with them).

As for the Lit one page stories, they sort of miss the point that a lot of readers are here for arousal, so you've got to give readers long enough to get off. If readers are getting off within a page, they really should be out mowing the lawn, coz they're two-strokes .

 

[PennyThompson]

Just a few disjointed thoughts that I'm too tired to massage into a single thesis...

I, for one, love that you're willing to push against the boundaries of what Lot audiences are looking for

Although your writing form and the pulp style isn't something I naturally gravitate towards, I do like the idea of painting a word picture in quick harsh strokes, and I believe it can be done artfully and erotically.

I don't think a story needs to singlehandedly get the reader from room temperature to climax in order to be successful as erotica. I think if your stories leave someone wanting more, the key word is want, which is desire, which is the core of erotica.

I do think that certain elements of your stories will put a ceiling on your scores. But you aren't writing to the largest possible audience, you're writing to perfect a specific artistic form which can be beautiful, and which can be mastered.

You can achieve greatness without achieving widespread appeal, in the same way that a good 2-minute punk song will never reach the masses that a 3-minute pop song will

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I just feel like Literotica needs to have a manual that it's not just the writer's resources, or the articles like the Trump Categories, or How to be a Literotica Author. Those are good, those are great resources, and part of me wishes I read them sooner because I wouldn't have failed so much, but while I believe that anyone's writing is valid, and they can write whatever they want, it doesn't seem like this site thinks the same, whether it is the rules of the game, other authors' rather authoritarian views on what others should be doing, or how contradicting it feels the advice of "writing for yourself" when you're writing for an audience, or how you don't want to care about metrics yet you can't get your eyes off of them...

Is Literotica the right place for me?

Stop trying to fit in. Just write. You will be happier. I'm not sure about your work (I may have read one of your pieces, I don't recall), but I am a fan of your posts because you speak 100% art, 0% bullshit, and you're a passionate straight shooter.

Take it from me. I am staggeringly unpopular here, both in the forum and with my writing. I have way more haters here than friends. i have a handful of fans that love my work and a fuckton of folks who hate it or are even worse bored by it. In the score comparison thread started here the other day, percentiles by category were calculated. Of the categories that were calculated, none of my stories scored above the 20th percentile - NONE. Most were below the 10th and a couple below the 1st. This proves nothing about the quality of my work but it 100% proves that I ... am ... un ... popular! Unpopular as all fucking fuck!! I have been posting for 6 years. Number of followers = 108. Most votes on a story = 64. That's it! Fucking bupkiss. I might be the most unpopular active writer in all of lit. I am easily the most unpopular writer active in the AH.

I DON'T FUCKING CARE! HAH!!

I didn't come here to be popular (surprise!). I came here to write, to express my art, to get the stories in my soul out there, and I've been very successful at doing that so far (although I'm slow at it). And by the sounds of your posts (not just this thread) you are in a similar boat. You have stories to tell. Tell the fucking stories because they deserve to be told, and fuck the bullshit expectations. Just fuck 'em. ; )

 

[HotCosmo]

You should write whatever you want and publish here whatever you feel suits here.

Are there going to be some pissed folks trying to police what you do? Unfortunately, yes, and I'm not going to say that doesn't affect me or let me down like most people try to say in this thread. I'm a person, I'm publishing something, and I'm opening myself and my work to these people. A bad comment hurts; people telling me that my attempt at communication is not valid sucks.

But Literotica is many things; one of them is an amateur publishing page. If there is a place in the world to just try new things with your erotic writing, it's this place. We can't allow short-minded people to let us out.

Besides, I really think that Literotica has more diversity of writers and readers than this forum makes us believe. You, like me and like many authors, are not that prototype of an English major writer. Our work is as valid as any other author's, maybe it's not the most popular, but it's not meant to be. I'm a person who found that writing was the most fun way to learn and practice a foreign language, who found that writing was sometimes healing, and who found that the lack of orthographic depth in English is hell on Earth but sometimes still fun. Of course, a lot of the things I write are gonna suck, and who cares? (A lot of people, as I said, but their comments and their policing say more of themselves than of my writing or my person. Have fun writing and have fun publishing )

 

[StillStunned]

Again, I ask: am I in the right place for my work? Is Literotica the right place for me? I'm really frustrated that I want to do stuff, to publish things that are far beyond the schoolgirl erotica that has become part of my signature. I'm still writing, I'm still learning, but it's like...

I just feel like Literotica needs to have a manual that it's not just the writer's resources, or the articles like the Trump Categories, or How to be a Literotica Author. Those are good, those are great resources, and part of me wishes I read them sooner because I wouldn't have failed so much, but while I believe that anyone's writing is valid, and they can write whatever they want, it doesn't seem like this site thinks the same, whether it is the rules of the game, other authors' rather authoritarian views on what others should be doing, or how contradicting it feels the advice of "writing for yourself" when you're writing for an audience, or how you don't want to care about metrics yet you can't get your eyes off of them...

Is Literotica the right place for me?

I find Lit a very forgiving place to publish. You can try your hand at anything, within the site's few hard rules. Looking at my own portfolio: grimdark fantasy, sci-fi horror, a lovesick troll, sword & sorcery adventure, brother-sister incest, post-apocalyptic adventure, Ruritanian romance/horror, fairy tales, voyeurism, stream of consciousness cyberpunk, lyrical erotica, non-erotic micro-fic, a "disturbing as fuck" stalker story, a psychological lesbian revenge story and essays on writing. I've probably missed a few too.

Different styles? I write in close 3P past, 1P past, 1P present, a 1P/3P hybrid and twice in 2P. I've written sparse, lyrical, emotional, Gothic and tongue-in-cheek.

There's a readership for all of it. Sometimes you'll have more readers and sometimes fewer, but if views is what you want, just write an incest story. Watch the view counter go up to 100k, shrug, and go back to writing the stuff you really enjoy. If people read it and like it, that's great. If not, at least you did something you enjoyed.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

A bad comment hurts; people telling me that my attempt at communication is not valid sucks.

Only if you're writing for fan approval.

 

[HotCosmo]

Only if you're writing for fan approval.

I'm exposing something that I've created and love and people hate it, of course it hurts, I would like that other people appreciate the things I created especially if I'm publishing (aka sharing with them).

I dont write only for a fan approval. I still love my work whatever other people thinks (although sometimes some comments can made me rethink some of my works and change opinions).

 

[BobbyBrandt]

But yeah, AH could use a change in mindset.

My mindset:

"Don't judge other's sins just because they are different than your own."

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I'm exposing something that I've created and love and people hate it, of course it hurts, I would like that other people appreciate the things I created especially if I'm publishing (aka sharing with them).

I get tons of hate and I can honestly say that it doesn't suck and it doesn't hurt. Twenty years ago I'm sure that it would have at least to a degree, but I wasn't writing then, certainly not in any serious or dedicated capacity.

I dont write only for a fan approval. I still love my work whatever other people thinks (although sometimes some comments can made me rethink some of my works and change opinions).

But the part of you that hurts is the part that is writing for fan approval. The more that it hurts, the more that you can tell how much you are writing for fan approval even though you may not intend to nor realize it. That's all that I'm saying.

It's a tricky phenomenon for sure. If I write to be read then one would think that I write to be enjoyed, so logically I want people to like it. Well, yes, but not exactly. It's not that simple. First, I write stuff that I would enjoy. Everyone's tastes are different and my tastes do not align all that well with the masses, so I understand completely that no matter how good (or bad) my story is, most people won't like it. I accept that long before I hit submit (heck even in the brainstorm stage), so it does not hurt when people do not like it. I am not writing to please the masses. I am writing to give the best reading experience for those whose tastes may align with mine at least in some way. If you wrote a psycho-thriller and then someone who hates psycho-thrillers and wanted a sweet romance pans your story because it wasn't a sweet romance, would you be upset? Maybe, but if you would be, then you would be definitely writing for the affirmation of others more than to tell the story that's in your heart. I'm not saying that that's what you are doing. That's just an extreme example.

In short, I am not ever writing to have someone pat me on the back and tell me how good I am, blow kisses and throw flowers at me. That's the ego's prize. I have an ego like anyone else but I've learned to recognize it which allows me to keep it in check, and in so doing I have found a greater reward of upping my skills and game and constantly pushing to try new themes and such, rather than crank out another 'crowd pleaser'. Boquets are temporary. Good stories last forever (and so do bad ones). It's far more rewarding for me to have the best stories that I can put out on my 'resume' - on my deathbed - than a pile of dead flowers and needing more so that I can use a false idol to trick myself into believing that I'm good at something. Now please, I am not trying to put you or anyone else down here. I'm just trying to make the point, the truth that I have found that most people live their entire lives not knowing, that when the criticism hurts, that's just your ego. Ignore your ego and the hurt goes away. The rewards are endless.

 

[nice90sguy]

you guys

That's just stupid. You know how diverse the writers are here are, and there is no "lit author" group for you to feel isolated from.

Ignore your ego and the hurt goes away

 

[Z_TheWriter]

I don't have any great insights. I'm too new here and am for several reasons struggling with my own brand of "should I be here?"

I will say that I personally believe in doing what you like, for the people who also enjoy it, wherever you can find the space for it, and trying to ignore any haters - external or internal. Not that I'm particularly good at implementing that myself currently.

Also please don't go, who else will ruin my dumb poetry? Or appreciate it when I ruin it myself?

On a more serious note though, if you're meeting a lot of negativity from other authors on the forums to the point where it's affecting your enjoyment of writing, maybe fuck the forums? Selfishly, I'd prefer to keep seeing you around here. But you can be damn sure I'd also stop coming here if I felt it was detrimental.

I'm personally trying to avoid most of the more serious writing related threads at the moment. Not because there's anything wrong with being interested in the craft, but because they often intimidate the shit out of me. Commercially published authors, genius writers, and 20 year Lit vets doing historical research or cultural studies for a single story. Long discussions about the merits of certain tenses, viewpoints, sentence lengths, how much work goes into X, Y and Z things I've never considered before.

I'm just a dumbass, depressed, ESL, engineering dropout (for now), with a semi-broken laptop keyboard and a fixation with romance. Not too long ago, I said something so dumb about writing that I fucking deleted it in embarrassment. I'm not sure I belong here either - even though my own experience has been that AH people are generally welcoming.

For now though, I'm gonna keep writing and publishing here because I enjoy it and because some readers seem to enjoy what I write. I'm also gonna keep hanging around AH, because it's fun and I like the people here. It seems like you're gonna keep writing too, so perhaps the more pertinent question is: If not Literotica, then where?

 

[KittyOfSteele]

My comment was meant generally, not reflecting your stories written as eighteen plus, more a comment on what "school girls" suggests to the wider community, which is what you're up against.

You read me as a policeman, which I'm not, merely pointing out Obvious 101 that Literotica has a hard policy line. A line which is easy to avoid if you age up characters and they've left school; more problematic when people insist on maintaining the age of their (younger) characters. It's that insistence that makes folk look sideways.

Keep in mind that probably half of the age policy threads come from people who are pushing the line, looking for ways to duck under it, so there's a natural cynicism. The other half are threads started by people genuinely seeking advice. I think you're the latter, but your posts are covering so much ground, it's difficult to respond coherently.

For what is worth I've never had an issue with the guidelines. I never felt compelled to create a thread about it, I never had to think "hOw cOuLD I avOid tHe GuiDELinES tODaY?" when I sit down to write, and I never, ever, had a rejection for underage characters. I'm always very careful for that because I know how strict the site can be, and as I said, boundaries with creativity can push for unique solutions, and create new forms of art. Again, Nevermore: that's a high school for young adults who are dead, and now must learn to be ghosts! If you're not going to appreciate that for the sapphic story, at least the gothic art in which is drawn stands out, and if you like Edgar Allan Poe, this is a sapphic love letter to him.

Regardless, I know why there's guidelines. The guidelines of Literotica are not there to justify or be used as moral compasses. The guidelines of Literotica exist to protect the platform. In a perfect world, they wouldn't be needed, but this is the real world.

So far as shorter pieces are concerned - I love the discipline of the 750 word exercises, but they're definitely more for authors than readers (although you can still do very well with them).

I may have found that they could be a niche of their own.

As for the Lit one page stories, they sort of miss the point that a lot of readers are here for arousal, so you've got to give readers long enough to get off. If readers are getting off within a page, they really should be out mowing the lawn, coz they're two-strokes .

I don't think that's true, or that the opposite is true. Readers are here for arousal, that's correct, but you can't equate that readers are here looking for long works. Every reader is different. Some want something longer than a page, others are content with one page stories.

My theory is that readers who look exclusively for arousal consume the story in the same way one would consume a porn video: they skip it immediately into the sexy parts, and always stay into the sexy parts. Reading the same paragraphs over and over again it's the same as clicking the same timestamp over and over again. I don't have any way to prove it, and none of us can. We don't really have a way to know which part of our stories are the most read, and Lit doesn't have that same function that Wattpad or Soundcloud has in which you can leave comments at certain timestamps or excerpts of text.

I do know it takes 30 to 60 minutes in average for a person to masturbate, and the average reading speed is 250 WPM. Having said that it makes sense that stories that are 10K+ have success because it stands comfortably in the connection between average reading speed and time of masturbation. But each reader is unique, and their experience reading the site is different.

So no, I don't think stories that have more than a page are a magic bullet, nor are the one-page stories. I think the true magic bullet is the sweet spot between what do you want, and what your readers want.

Just a few disjointed thoughts that I'm too tired to massage into a single thesis...

I, for one, love that you're willing to push against the boundaries of what Lot audiences are looking for

Although your writing form and the pulp style isn't something I naturally gravitate towards, I do like the idea of painting a word picture in quick harsh strokes, and I believe it can be done artfully and erotically.

I don't think a story needs to singlehandedly get the reader from room temperature to climax in order to be successful as erotica. I think if your stories leave someone wanting more, the key word is want, which is desire, which is the core of erotica.

I do think that certain elements of your stories will put a ceiling on your scores. But you aren't writing to the largest possible audience, you're writing to perfect a specific artistic form which can be beautiful, and which can be mastered.

You can achieve greatness without achieving widespread appeal, in the same way that a good 2-minute punk song will never reach the masses that a 3-minute pop song will

Thank you, and that's precisely why I got into pulp long before erotica: a lot of the things that we take for granted stand upon the shoulders of pulp literature, and I don't do pulp because of nostalgia, but because of the ethos from the era in which pulp succeeded the most. That alone could be something I'd write for both a Substack newsletter, and an article for R&E or How To.

I do agree with the core of erotica being desire. That's actually a conclusion that someone who doesn't consume erotica realized after playing several porn games and really taking in their story.

Of course, I'm not writing for metrics. If anything, the only metric I'd chase is money. I know what you're about to say: "where's the money on Lit, Kitty?" I said "IF anything." I didn't come to Lit to gain money, I came here to skill up, which is what I've been doing over the past five years, even though I don't post a lot. My goal was always to try and get some level of constancy when it comes to publishing, something that I've failed way too much, and then I come to AH trying to see if there was something I was doing wrong... then I see that I was doing everything wrong... but then everyone is doing everything wrong, yet they remain constant by not following what people are saying?

It's that contradiction that didn't compute... It's why I said earlier that the thing about "your story should have X amount of Lit pages" should be put into question because a lot of us don't do that, or aren't able to do that, and yet I keep seeing that narrative over and over again, so now it feels more like a dogma rather than reality.

Stop trying to fit in. Just write. You will be happier. I'm not sure about your work (I may have read one of your pieces, I don't recall), but I am a fan of your posts because you speak 100% art, 0% bullshit, and you're a passionate straight shooter.

Take it from me. I am staggeringly unpopular here, both in the forum and with my writing. I have way more haters here than friends. i have a handful of fans that love my work and a fuckton of folks who hate it or are even worse bored by it. In the score comparison thread started here the other day, percentiles by category were calculated. Of the categories that were calculated, none of my stories scored above the 20th percentile - NONE. Most were below the 10th and a couple below the 1st. This proves nothing about the quality of my work but it 100% proves that I ... am ... un ... popular! Unpopular as all fucking fuck!! I have been posting for 6 years. Number of followers = 108. Most votes on a story = 64. That's it! Fucking bupkiss. I might be the most unpopular active writer in all of lit. I am easily the most unpopular writer active in the AH.

I DON'T FUCKING CARE! HAH!!

I didn't come here to be popular (surprise!). I came here to write, to express my art, to get the stories in my soul out there, and I've been very successful at doing that so far (although I'm slow at it). And by the sounds of your posts (not just this thread) you are in a similar boat. You have stories to tell. Tell the fucking stories because they deserve to be told, and fuck the bullshit expectations. Just fuck 'em. ; )

Girl, you're one of the people I was hoping to leave a post here because I love your no bullshit style, and to be honest with you, I've always felt drawn to the unpopular ones throughout my whole life, so just your first paragraph alone means a lot to me, and I thank you for that.

A reason I opened this thread is also for having a slap. Thank you. If anything, I'll publish out of self respect. And I made the commitment to do my best to not delete the stories. If there's one that has zero ratings, zero engagement, zero comments, even zero views, it stays there as a form of "fuck you" to the algorithm.

I SWEAR I'M NOT TRYING TO POST A STORY ON THE FORUM SIDE! CHARACTER LIMIT!

 

[KittyOfSteele]

You should write whatever you want and publish here whatever you feel suits here.

Are there going to be some pissed folks trying to police what you do? Unfortunately, yes, and I'm not going to say that doesn't affect me or let me down like most people try to say in this thread. I'm a person, I'm publishing something, and I'm opening myself and my work to these people. A bad comment hurts; people telling me that my attempt at communication is not valid sucks.

But Literotica is many things; one of them is an amateur publishing page. If there is a place in the world to just try new things with your erotic writing, it's this place. We can't allow short-minded people to let us out.

Besides, I really think that Literotica has more diversity of writers and readers than this forum makes us believe. You, like me and like many authors, are not that prototype of an English major writer. Our work is as valid as any other author's, maybe it's not the most popular, but it's not meant to be. I'm a person who found that writing was the most fun way to learn and practice a foreign language, who found that writing was sometimes healing, and who found that the lack of orthographic depth in English is hell on Earth but sometimes still fun. Of course, a lot of the things I write are gonna suck, and who cares? (A lot of people, as I said, but their comments and their policing say more of themselves than of my writing or my person. Have fun writing and have fun publishing )

Honestly, criticism doesn't affect me. I've been a musician since I was 4 years old; I've heard it all to this point. I've even had to face a lot of criticism back in university for being part of the band who rearranged Bach works into symphonic metal, even though The Beatles did that before us forty years earlier, and most of my music teachers not only know that, but also listen to rock and metal on a day to day basis, and one of the teachers I've had who made harmony and counterpoint simple is the one who introduced me to Frank Zappa back in music school, but the University is the place where I found the hardest walls when they were usually at the music school?

It's a weird thing in retrospect, but I've heard it all, and I've had people policing my art before. Even fellow musicians who didn't like that I was playing the keyboards (there were plenty of guitarists already) for rock bands who did the same sacrilage that turned The Beatles into a hit.

I guess I should've expected it here, yet it's still surprising to me that fellow authors are the ones who are policing content. Not the moderators, who are supposed to be the ones making sure the TOS, the rules, the guidelines, the laws, everything should be followed, but power tripping authors whose sole desire is, apparently, have the same power that mods have. I'm not exaggerating. There are people casting a vote for works being at least 3K long, but thankfully, they don't hold any power here.

The question should be then: if they hold no power over what gets published, what doesn't, what people read, what people don't read, and what people cum at in the website, why should I listen to them?

I find Lit a very forgiving place to publish. You can try your hand at anything, within the site's few hard rules. Looking at my own portfolio: grimdark fantasy, sci-fi horror, a lovesick troll, sword & sorcery adventure, brother-sister incest, post-apocalyptic adventure, Ruritanian romance/horror, fairy tales, voyeurism, stream of consciousness cyberpunk, lyrical erotica, non-erotic micro-fic, a "disturbing as fuck" stalker story, a psychological lesbian revenge story and essays on writing. I've probably missed a few too.

Different styles? I write in close 3P past, 1P past, 1P present, a 1P/3P hybrid and twice in 2P. I've written sparse, lyrical, emotional, Gothic and tongue-in-cheek.

There's a readership for all of it. Sometimes you'll have more readers and sometimes fewer, but if views is what you want, just write an incest story. Watch the view counter go up to 100k, shrug, and go back to writing the stuff you really enjoy. If people read it and like it, that's great. If not, at least you did something you enjoyed.

I know that by experience, not due to having a diverse portfolio, but due to having hiatuses. Lit is forgiving, and what I like about your portfolio is the diversity of it. You could even say I'm @StillStunned about how Literotica is in a nutshell. In fact, profiles like yours are why I hesitate on leaving the platform. I came here with a very similar reason as the guys from @TheWritingGroup came (or it could be just Annie being the sole member of the account, and the other three are just a fever dream from her, I don't know, that's just a theory, A LIT THEORY! So Annie are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay Annie? [I wanted to make that joke since way too long]). We are different in the sense that I'm solo while they are four, but we have the same reason at its core: to learn.

That's just stupid. You know how diverse the writers are here are, and there is no "lit author" group for you to feel isolated from.

Yes, I know. @StillStunned reminded me of that. I know my post is stupid, and that's because I was a toddler and a child in the 90s, while you were a guy. So I am stupid. So, as a guy from the 90s to a kid from the 90s, PLEASE HELP ME, ANIKI! That's the whole reason for this thread.

I don't have any great insights. I'm too new here and am for several reasons struggling with my own brand of "should I be here?"

I will say that I personally believe in doing what you like, for the people who also enjoy it, wherever you can find the space for it, and trying to ignore any haters - external or internal. Not that I'm particularly good at implementing that myself currently.

Also please don't go, who else will ruin my dumb poetry? Or appreciate it when I ruin it myself?

On a more serious note though, if you're meeting a lot of negativity from other authors on the forums to the point where it's affecting your enjoyment of writing, maybe fuck the forums? Selfishly, I'd prefer to keep seeing you around here. But you can be damn sure I'd also stop coming here if I felt it was detrimental.

I'm personally trying to avoid most of the more serious writing related threads at the moment. Not because there's anything wrong with being interested in the craft, but because they often intimidate the shit out of me. Commercially published authors, genius writers, and 20 year Lit vets doing historical research or cultural studies for a single story. Long discussions about the merits of certain tenses, viewpoints, sentence lengths, how much work goes into X, Y and Z things I've never considered before.

I'm just a dumbass, depressed, ESL, engineering dropout (for now), with a semi-broken laptop keyboard and a fixation with romance. Not too long ago, I said something so dumb about writing that I fucking deleted it in embarrassment. I'm not sure I belong here either - even though my own experience has been that AH people are generally welcoming.

For now though, I'm gonna keep writing and publishing here because I enjoy it and because some readers seem to enjoy what I write. I'm also gonna keep hanging around AH, because it's fun and I like the people here. It seems like you're gonna keep writing too, so perhaps the more pertinent question is: If not Literotica, then where?

Not leaving the forums precisely because, in spite of the AHs within AH (AHception anyone? Would Christopher Nolan approve, or is this a Denis Villeneuve type of thing?), there are some good people here that I like, and I've had fruitful interactions with. In fact, two of them that I wanted to post posted, with one being confused to my question, and the other one giving me a much needed slap. People like them, and others who have posted, have helped me more both in this thread as well as outside of it than the people policing the content ever will, whether that is hypocritically disregarding what I write as immoral while they are completely fine doing more dubious stories than me, or telling others that they should do what's guaranteed to work.

Honestly, after sleeping through the evening, and reading the newer posts, I do have some conclusions as to why this is both the right place for me and why it isn't. I'll share them in case anyone is going through the same predicament, but it's going to take another post. Short answer is that no, Literotica is not the right place for me. Literotica is actually the perfect place for me.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

... I came here with a very similar reason as the guys from @TheWritingGroup came (or it could be just Annie being the sole member of the account, and the other three are just a fever dream from her, I don't know, that's just a theory, A LIT THEORY! So Annie are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay Annie? [I wanted to make that joke since way too long]). We are different in the sense that I'm solo while they are four, but we have the same reason at its core: to learn.

And naturally it's a music joke.

I'll let you in on a secret. We're all figments. How many people post to Literotica using our real identities?

--Annie

 

[PennyThompson]

a lot of the things that we take for granted stand upon the shoulders of pulp literature, and I don't do pulp because of nostalgia, but because of the ethos from the era in which pulp succeeded the most. That alone could be something I'd write for both a Substack newsletter, and an article for R&E or How To.

I would definitely read that essay!

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Your post somewhat surprised me. I read and skimmed my way through this thread, but I'm still unsure where exactly the issue lies.

If I understood you correctly, your problem isn't with Lit's content rules, but with the AH?
But what do you mean by policing? No one here has any power to enforce anything. We share our thoughts here on what we like and dislike, and sometimes we share some strong opinions, but I don't see anyone bullying or attacking others for the kinks or type of stories they write.

Sure, there have been posts criticizing NC, a certain type of LW stories, sexualized racial inequality, etc. But with the exception of maybe several posts in the three and a half years I've been here (oh god, I sound like Simon now), I've not seen anyone directly attacking others for writing such stories. I mean, we share thoughts, we rant sometimes here, but that's what this place is all about.

I've criticized the type of story you seem to like to write, the really short ones, but not on principle, but because they seem to flood the site. There's nothing inherently wrong with them; I would love some kind of separation between stories based on length.

But also, I've never attacked anyone here for writing such stories. In a way, that's the good side of this place. We can express our likes and dislikes without ever going personal. Me or anyone else disliking some concept shouldn't prevent anyone from writing it. I've never judged anyone here based on the stories they write. It's only what they post on the forum that can sometimes trigger discussions/arguments.

So in that sense, I think the AH would lose plenty if you were to leave. I really mean that.
In the sea of Americans, Brits, and Australians, it's good to hear thoughts from someone who comes from a different culture and who expresses different ways of thinking. I also often feel like an odd AHer, as much as for my general criticism towards the site as for my significant cultural differences compared to what I call "The Westerners," who are an overwhelming majority here in the AH.

Don't fucking leave. But also, I'd appreciate it if you could express, in much fewer words, what exactly you find to be the glaring issue with the AH?

I mean, other than the fact that many of them are worshippers of Laurel.

Yeah, I couldn't help myself here.

 

[StillStunned]

I mean, other than the fact that many of them are worshippers of Laurel.

In C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, the people of Calormen always add a tag whenever they mention their ruler. the Tisroc: "May he live forever". I think we should start doing that for Laurel and Manu (may they live forever) too.

 

[Bramblethorn]

FWIW, most Literotica authors are not active in this forum; I would speculate that most Literotica authors don't even know this place exists.

AH has its own dynamic and there are both good and bad things about that dynamic, but posting on Literotica is not contingent on having any kind of relationship at all with AH if it's not working for you, and if you do decide to have some relationship with AH it doesn't have to be "wholehearted embrace".

I have some of the AH posters on ignore, not because they're Satan incarnate, not necessarily even because I consider them bad people, just because I decided that this place was more enjoyable (and I was less likely to get sucked into things that I don't want to get sucked into) if I didn't automatically see what they have to say. Likewise, there are some threads that I just roll my eyes at and skip on to the next one. Sometimes you just gotta let people be wrong.

 

[Bramblethorn]

addendum: I think some of the advice given here about writing is bad, but then I think pretty much any writing forum or how-to resource that one might find is going to have a significant percentage of bad advice, because people love giving advice and are chronically bad at distinguishing between "this works for me" and "everybody needs to do this".

 

[TheLobster]

But also, I'd appreciate it if you could express, in much fewer words, what exactly you find to be the glaring issue with the AH?

I concur.

And I find it immensely amusing that OP seems to allude to a prevailing lack of acceptance for shorter forms of writing on Lit, while simultaneously wording those sentiments in such a way that they have exceeded the incredibly generous word count limit for posts, twice.

 

[YmaOHyd]

In C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, the people of Calormen always add a tag whenever they mention their ruler. the Tisroc: "May he live forever". I think we should start doing that for Laurel and Manu (may they live forever) too.

They should get some epithets, too. Laurel could be Laurel, Machikha Nash Our Stepmother, Zat al-Dawahi Mistress of Misfortunes, First of Her Name.

 

[StillStunned]

Laurel, Machikha Nash Our Stepmother, Zat al-Dawahi Mistress of Misfortunes, First of Her Name.

(May she live forever)