I haven’t been blogging much the past week or so. Things got hectic moving back East on short notice and I’ve spent the past few days seeing friends and settling in at home. I have a few ideas churning for future posts, like an essay on the differences between loneliness, being alone, and being single. Plus yesterday I finished reading The Sexy Librarian’s Big Book of Erotica and will be sharing a review of the fantastic anthology next month on its blog tour. I have some irons in the fire. Things will pick up again soon, I promise!
There’s a short story I’m focusing most of my creative energy on right now that I am so excited about, which should be available in an anthology this fall (details to come). I’ve had the basic outline and characters rattling around in my skull for a while but I’m having more difficulty than usual putting words to paper. I have, to use a cliché, writer’s block. But it’s not so much that I’m not in the mood to write, which I have been doing almost constantly since the beginning of August. Pretty much all I’ve done is listen to Sam Smith on repeat and journal in the second person. I just don’t want to write this. That’s the weird thing about being a sex writer: what if I’m just not feeling very sexy?
But looking back, some of my best stories are the ones I forced myself to finish when I wasn’t in the mood. I cobbled “Memory Foam” together in bits and pieces over a six month period, and now it reads seamlessly to me even though I know what a struggle it was. I’ve been sending slivers of this new story to friends (tentatively titled “Friendly Neighborhood Drug Dealer” because I went to Wesleyan and because duh) and so far they have unanimously gushed about how sexy it is. Some stories are a flood, some are patchworked together.
A friend of mine is reading my thesis and just messaged me on Facebook “Please never ever stop writing.” So I’ll keep plugging along until the words feel more natural. In the mean time, read my damn free ebook like this goofy stock photo hand model. It’s about to hit 100 downloads and that’s pretty exciting. And for the love of dental dams and summer rain storms, let me know what you think of it! Jot down a comment or send me an email or a tweet @brosandprose: I’m just some twenty-two year old who put together a pdf on her laptop. I like feedback. Also attention in general.
See you soon, more coherently.
Ella Dawson 
Hey, Ella Congrats on reaching 100 downloads of Memory Foam. That’s exciting. I, like you, love feedback, comments, ridicule, and although I’m not a 22yo with a laptop, attention in general. I’ve often heard that the reader needs to feel a connection between himself and one of the characters to truly enjoy a story and for me, surprisingly, it was Lucy, and more specifically, Lucy’s self doubt of where she stood in Max’s eyes. You also captured the essense of recent college graduates and their fear of finding success in the real world very well.
The story was a perfect mix of feelings and sex. Not too romance, not too porn. Not too heavy, not too light.
Keep doing that.
Thanks, Kenny! I always love hearing who readers relate to in my stories, and Memory Foam is one of my favorites because people seem to really love the characters. Either it’s Lucy’s vulnerability or Max’s goofiness or just the general post-grad panic. I wrote this before my senior year of college, so I hadn’t experienced the post-grad drop yet personally, and I’m glad I did it justice.
As for the balance of romance/porn, feelings/sex, I’ll certainly try! Thank you for reading!