Remittance Girl's Blog, page 40

Audiobooks & Text to Voice Proofing

I became an audiobook addict for a single reason: I don't much like reading on a screen and, living in Vietnam, having books shipped to me is problematic. Customs and the Ministry of Culture 'inspect' them to make sure you aren't reading anything that's bad for you.

So, being able to download audiobooks directly off the internet has become a very convenient way for me to get my fiction hit without being over-weight on my luggage every time I came back from abroad.

Although I write erotic fiction, my main reading penchant is for sci-fi and thriller, with a hefty dose of horror thrown in for good measure.

Having a book read, however, is a very different experience to reading it yourself. And, strangely enough, I never understood how much we, as readers, form our own voice in our heads to act as narrator when we're reading fiction. This is short-circuited when a book is read to you. The tone, the emphasis, accents, etc. have a huge effect on the narrative experience.

Having just plowed through a number of F.G. Cottam novels, I stumbled across his blog on goodreads and he has an interesting post on how listening to your own book read can give you insight into its flaws in a way that editing can't.

I write on a mac, and it has a nifty little 'voice' feature that I use almost constantly after I finish a first draft. At first, I set it up with the least offensive voice I could find. It still sounded ridiculously electronic - like Stephen Hawking reading smut - which sent me off into spasms of giggling. But the value of it lies in that, if the prose can shine through that kind of a brutal reading, it's pretty good prose.

I also find that it's excellent for proof-reading. I'm one of those writers who goes almost blind to the prose on the page. I know what I meant and where I'm going with the story, so I have a terrible time spotting typos, repetitions, grammar mistakes, etc. Listening to chunks of the text makes the errors stand out a mile, so I catch them. Most of the time, anyway.

I'm not sure how to do this on a PC, but on a mac, it's easy. Go into System Preferences, Speech, Text-to-Speach, and select the system voice that is least offensive to you. Tick the 'Speak selected text when the key is pressed' and just set up a hot key for it.

Then, when you select a chunk of text with your cursor, you can hit the hot key, and it will read it back to you.

If you can't live with any of the system voices (I found Stephen Hawking very disturbing after a while) , you can purchase better ones, through Cepstral. I bought a voice called 'Lawrence'.

Strangely enough, I have become rather enamoured of Lawrence. I picture him as approximately 55, rather lean, a bit donnish. I'm almost positive he lives in my computer after having been fired from MI5 for gross misconduct with a stock boy.

He's got absolutely no shame, has Lawrence. He'll read almost everything and pronounce it quite reliably. I noticed, however, he has a preference for lesbian sex scenes. He reads them with almost disturbing relish.

A bit creepy, really.

Eating Pussy

If I had a dollar for every email I've received from men and women concerned that their girlfriends don't really like being subjected to oral sex, I would be substantially better off. Not exactly rich, but well… it would pay for a shopping spree on Amazon. And you'd think that in these days of rampant butt fucking, obsessions with cream pies, etc.. how they hell could anyone be hung up about cunnilingus? Even harder to fathom is that I've met a fair share of lesbians who aren't particularly crazy about getting it either. How is it that someone could get past the social ostracization of being a lesbian, but still have problems with pussy shyness? Add to all this the fact that I write erotic fiction. I'm not a sexologist or a sex therapist. I don't have any training or particular insight about this from a clinical perspective. It's something of a testament to what a prevalent and difficult issue this is, that in their frustration, they ask me. Anyway, I thought I'd offer up my opinion on the issue here, because I'm tired of responding individually to emails and DMs on the topic. I was starting to type in [...]

The Pale Beyond the Pale: Transgressive Erotica

It sounds like a joke: transgressive erotica. Isn't all erotica transgressive? Well, it used to be. Historically speaking, the West has gone through periods of almost shocking acceptance of explicit erotic literature. It has also gone through periods of extreme repression. But, on the whole, they have been periods that imposed blanket restrictions on writing that contained explicit sexual content. If you were Lawrence, Carrington, Miller, Nin or de Sade, your work was banned for being obscene. Period. There wasn't a lot of judgement about which subject matter was more obscene than another. As a genre, erotica has gained a certain mainstream legitimacy with the legal publishing of some of the above-mentioned authors, only to lose it by requiring such low standards of literary skill on the part of its authors. It has always suffered from the fact that the term 'erotica' has been used interchangeably with pornography. In fact, it is disheartening to find that even in academic journals, the term is often used interchangeably.  Many high profile erotica writers have, indeed, insisted that they are pornographers.  But I suspect that is more as an effort to reclaim the word in the way that the gay movement strove to [...]

The Uses of Twitter: Flogging the Dead Bird

This is a rant, really. One pointed straight at some my fellow writers. I love twitter. I love its liminality. I love the ephemeral quality of its flow. I've met some wonderful people there. Made some excellent friends. I've bonded with a lot of writers I'd have never met if it weren't for twitter. It's a great community. I get to chat with readers, authors, people I admire, artists and poets and painters and candlestick makers. But I hate people whose primary reason for being on twitter is trying to sell stuff and when I run across them I block them. It's called social media. Not marketing media. Not mall media. I think twitter is a great place for writers. If nothing else, it sure teaches you to tighten up your sentences. At best, it's a marvelous space to develop friendships.  To learn from other people. To broaden out your view of the world. If you need to know about ballistics at 5 am in the morning and want the short version, tweet  your question; someone out there is going to know. When I was researching amputees, I found out I had five surgeons following me and one person who [...]

Shot From Both Sides: Modeling Normal Through Publication

I'm doing a lot more thinking about my thesis topic. Trying to choose my angle of approach. For those of you who have access to the online journal libraries through a university, search 'modern erotic literature', 'erotic fiction' or 'erotica' and see just how dead the field is. What you get is an avalanche of writing on pornography – with no distinction between written erotic fiction, photography and video pornography. Sure, there's lots about the erotic poetry in Greco-Roman culture. Lots about de Sade and the Victorian 'pornographers'. Lots about Lawrence, Nin, Miller, Bataille and Pauline Réage. There are historical examinations on the banning of books for obscenity and prosecution of publishers. It is interesting to me that, during the Victorian period, because all explicit literature was illegal, once writers stepped past the gates of what was deemed to be acceptable for public consumption, they felt personally free to write about all their sexual fantasies. From the sadistic and masochistic, sexual delight in corporal punishment, shaming and humiliation, rape, buggery, bondage and watersports – they practiced no limits. Strange that in a time when this sort of writing was so prohibited, the writers who DID transgress felt free to transgress [...]

The Problem of Careless Language & the Deconstruction of Rape Fantasies

I've been doing a lot of interviews with fellow writers on the subject of restrictions in erotic fiction.  With a few exceptions, most erotic fiction writers write about the things that turn them on. This makes sense. It's very hard to ensure that you are going to write about something you don't have fantasies about in an arousing manner.  The few erotica writers who do venture into areas of kink that are not their particular flavour tend to do it as a challenge to themselves. I admit that I have written certain pieces of, for instance, F/m FemDom – which is not generally something in my briefcase of kink – because I am interested and compelled by the dynamics of it. But I worry that behind the words, there just isn't enough heat or desire in the story. It's difficult to understand a kink that doesn't arouse you. But as erotic fiction writers, if we have any obligation at all, beyond being eloquent writers, I think it is to be extremely careful with our language when it comes to kinks that squick us. It is very easy to misrepresent, generalize, or denigrate things that don't arouse us.  I feel an [...]

Today is Fantasy Pride Day

I'm proclaiming today 'fantasy pride day'.  And I'm doing a very informal poll to find out how many of my readers have have sexual fantasies that include non-consensual elements.  Furthermore, I'm going to challenge you, if you do, to write one out. I figure that one of the best ways to get rid of any embarrassment or shame about this is just to write it out, and put it out there. If you'd like, you can either post it anonymously in the comments area of this post (the verification part asks for an email address but it won't show on the comment – if you're really nervous, type in a fake one),  OR, you can blog it on your own blog and paste the link into the comments area. Here are the rules: The fantasy must contain some element of non-consent. It must be a fantasy – i.e. you dreamed it up  yourself and it's erotic to you. It doesn't matter if you're not a writer or you're not very good with words. This isn't about writing prowess, it's about celebrating your sexual imagination. It doesn't matter what gender or sexual orientation you are. It doesn't matter if, in the [...]

Defining Erotica

This has been a very exciting week on the blogsphere.  Oh Get A Grip has had a week of posts from the members of their group on defining erotica. And Catherine Leary went on to respond to this in her own inimitable way. One of the proclamations that came up over and over again was that, in order for something to be 'erotica', it has to turn you on. Oh, wait – it has to turn YOU on? Or ME? Or Harry over there? So we're predicating the identity of a whole genre of literature – my genre – on the the individual sexual response of any given reader? Fuck! No wonder this genre is so maligned and disrespected and derided! We are all suffering from severe identity confusion here. I'm an erotica writer if this particular story turns your crank, but tomorrow I could just be bad pulp because you're not feeling inclined to be horny. There is a difference between any given piece that may or may not be 'erotic' to a given reader, and whether that piece of fiction contains the conventions associated with erotica as a genre. Just as there might be novels within the 'Thriller' [...]

Why I'll never get reviewed by the NY Times

The discussions that have gone on last week on various blogs but especially at Oh Get A Grip are important. These are erotic fiction writers attempting to grapple with the definitions of the genre, of where they situate themselves in the public sphere, of how erotic literature is perceived by the public, the critics and the academy. Many, many erotica writers – successful ones – don't mourn that their work will never be considered literary. They puzzle why there is minority of us who rage and kick and beat our heels against the floor about it. They are angry at us for what they see as a kind of 'class war'. Why should we – and the public, the critics and the academy -  place a higher value on literary fiction than on genre fiction. Post-modernism has attempted to level the field. To confiscate the authority of canon and critic and expert and proclaim the democratic will of the common man as arbiter of accomplishment, success, value.  And so, we are left with almost unreadable academic texts on the mythological aspects of WWWF and the sublime transcendence of authenticity in an amateur porn clip containing Paris Hilton. And, ironically, this [...]

What Erotic Fiction is Not

If you've come to my site for a quick wank, you've come to the wrong place. Let me assure you that for sheer sexual stimulus, nothing works like porn. So get over whatever hesitation you've got about it and get your ass over to xhamster. You're bound to find a clip that will do the trick. If you've come to my site looking for emotional comfort, for a place to dream about love that ends well, that lasts eternally, that soothes away the rough edges of a jaded, cold, soulless world, you've also come to the wrong place. What you want is erotic romance. There are some excellent writers within the genre who provide not only wonderfully kinky sex, well written sex scenes and that lovely satisfying ending that soothes all the heartache and drama that went before – forgives it all in the end with a passionate kiss and a promise of forever. And it comes in whatever sexually oriented flavour and whatever historical setting you require it. I'm not denigrating either porn or romance. But I don't write either. If you come looking for those things here, you will leave unsatisfied. I write erotic fiction. For me, erotic [...]