How to Write About Sex

I recently have been toying with the idea of starting my own fetish sex positive blog, yet I’m unsure how personal I want to go into my kinky lifestyle. I have read a handful of your articles and must say great job! Your blog is simply amazing.

I am still relatively new to the kink scene and was hoping to make my blog about finally entering into a community of queer kinky men and women that I actually identify with as well as educating others on products and topics relating to fetish and kink. I don’t want my blog to be complete recount of my sex life, but yet want to use my sex life as examples to discuss topics like “finding a daddy/sir” “entering headspace” or “bore of vanilla sex”

All I was wondering is besides your blog, what other references or tips would you give a new fetish blogger wishing to document his own experience and have it framed in a way that readers would find interesting. 

I’d advise against focusing on educational kink content, since a) you’re a beginner and b) that content is widely available everywhere. The only thing you have — your only real authority — is in your own personal experience, and that is what people are most interested in. They don’t want generic how-to articles. They want you.

That’s why I nearly always answer my questions with a personal story from my own life. Because I’m not just answering questions. I’m telling stories, sharing my thoughts and views, and building a character. The character happens to be me — the real me, more or less — but how would you know if the character I’d created here was a work of fiction? Who is Beastly but a collection of tales?

Fiction and non-fiction are arbitrary, fussy distinctions that don’t have any basis in reality. In fact, a great way to understand character building and voice-as-character is to read some of the great first-person fiction out there. Lolita by Nabokov is a masterclass on how to create a complete and complex narrator who obviously isn’t real. Go read La Nausée by Sartre. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Then message me once you believe in nothing.

Again, steer away from teaching readers about kink, since, by your own admission, you know little about it. Instead, share your experience. Personalize the kink. Make it human.

When you get more practice, you’ll learn the artistry of disclosure and withholding. We don’t want to know everything. Classic “new writer” syndrome is an attempt to show everything — to describe every moment in detail, afraid that if you don’t, readers will lose their place in the narrative. They won’t.

Remember, writing is re-writing. I re-write my best posts on here dozens of times. You really don’t want to know how many times they get rewritten. It’s embarrassing. “Dozens” probably undercuts the true number. And since I always write about personal stuff — typically in a rush of passion — I’ve learned to let new posts sit and breathe for as long as I can before publishing. Every time I publish something the day I write it, the post later looks horrible and I end up editing a few weeks later anyway.

If you fear your personal details winding up in front of your mother, do something else. Sex blogging is a forfeiture of privacy. Even if you use a nom de plume, people will find out who you are. It’s not as life-altering as porn, but writing about your sex life is still risky to your family and loved ones. If you write about a boyfriend or partner without consulting them first, you will get dumped. I recommend keeping all current relationships off the blog. I’ve not followed this rule perfectly.

A professor once said you can give someone the tools of language and get paragraphs, but you can’t teach voice. It’s true. If you have the voice, you have it. If you don’t, consider agriculture or tech, or go into a useful trade like repairing air-conditioning units.

Love, Beastly

Above Image: Vintage HONCHO magazine cover, photo by Bianca Scarlato / Design by Dani Roche and Sabrina Scott