Sunday, April 19, 2026
Home Sexuality Books Sex Writing

Sex Writing

Random

Saying “NEXT”: When Fired From A Sex Writing Job…

By
Ralph Greco
-
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Saying “NEXT”: When Fired From A Sex Writing Job, When Losing Your Fuck-Buddy, To Life In General

I lost a job today (well, by the time you read this, a few weeks may have gone by). I feel kinda shitty about it; I have to be honest. As much because I always need the work as the fact that I now, once again, doubt my abilities. There are a whole host of reasons why I failed to make a connection with this client, an adult toy site, and I can rationalize all I like. My contact, who has been aces with me all along, took lots of the blame herself, claiming miscommunication and her bosses not really laying out what they needed from the get-go, so she, in turn, couldn’t relate those exact needs to me. Still, I feel kinda icky.

But I know I need just to say “NEXT.”

This might just be the hardest lesson we come to as freelancers, and I don’t mean only freelance sex writers; this “NEXT” rule we could probably all learn to hone to a fine edge. By all means, I am not saying not to reflect on why something didn’t work out, not learn from mistakes you made, not to delve back into the well and consider your skills, but if you are not able to at least whisper a ‘next’ and flow past the rejection, you might just get too weighed down by that rejection.

Which I feel myself indeed slipping into even now as I write this. But writing, as it usually does for me, is therapeutic and helps me to work this all out.

image from luxstorm from pixabay

The good thing about moving forward is… you move forward. You set yourself in motion for something coming down the pike you can’t even predict. I’m not saying it will be better or worse if and when you find some other guy or girl to take the place of the fuck-buddy who no longer wants you, when you find another job beyond that employer who has fired you, that you will come to love the game anew when your chess club revokes your yearly membership. I’m just saying that if you’re able to say “NEXT” at those instances when you are rejected for whatever reason, you will be ready to snatch, grab and maybe even make a more robust pass at whatever is coming.

And something is always coming.

Another powerful aspect of the “NEXT” and certainly something I am feeling mostly here, even stronger than the rejection, is that I am no longer fence-sitting. In the two weeks, I was surfing the logistics of my new working assignment, had delivered and been paid for the work, I had an uneasy feeling that things were not so hunky-dory. You know how you can sense these things, right? Even in the face of my contact telling me she liked my work, I felt unease as the weeks passed with how long it was taking for the powers-that-be to get back to me when, in the first week, the work was coming fast and furious, and my contact was riding me a bit to get things done. I might no longer have the job, but I am no longer working this worry, this fence-sitting of “Is everything ok, or is it not?” that I seem to have been right on the money about.

I also made sure to thank my contact, assure her that she and I are all good (which we are), and to tell her that, if things change, if they want to give me another chance, I am here for further consideration. And I am. I don’t hold grudges or look to spank someone later (well, maybe in my bedroom play, but that’s another story). I know you can’t un-ring a bell, and I would say it’s a 99% certainty that I won’t hear back from her about another job or further work from her higher-ups, but I am indeed always open to have the discussion of working for anyone at any time. And, as I have mentioned one more than once in this sex writing column and plenty on my podcast Licking Non-Vanilla with M. Christian (a shameless plug I know, but as Chris writes stuff here, I figure why not?), you should never burn a bridge. I do indeed like the contact from this job that just fired me, I certainly want to keep in touch with her and don’t want her to feel bad about the news she had to deliver to me today. But who knows where she will go, if indeed other opportunities at her company will open up for me with her (again doubtful), if she might go someplace else where she might need me?

So, here I am today, feeling a little dejected but ok. I had to pen a new column, so here it is, and I thought maybe the lesson of saying “NEXT” was a good one to impart to you my struggling or maybe even entirely happy erotica writer.

“NEXT.”

 

Run Silent, Run Niche

By
Ralph Greco
-

I’d venture to guess that there are subsections, off-shoots, niche areas that writers of all genres explore with various levels of success, might see financial gain from, or get mired in. I know mixing genres as I often do—marrying smut with satire, science-fiction with kink—has brought me as much forward momentum as it has rejection. I’d think the further down the rabbit hole a writer explores; whether he or she tickles forth scenes of noir westerns, tries their facility at parody romance, or steps the way many an erotic writer like me has, ever fine-tuning BDSM short fiction; the more one can either find a rabid audience who will gobble up your specific unusual scribblings, as much as a broad population who won’t give a rat’s ass to follow where it is you might be going.

I dare say, though, writing erotica as I do and being involved in the business of, I see many a publisher and reader thoroughly enjoying niche material. Why is this so of naughty in erotica, more than other kinds of writing? And is it actually so? I’m not so sure. I just know lots of my fellow smut writers are very comfortable delving into what is considered niche content.

Defined as a NOUN: “a specialized segment of the market for a particular kink of product or service, as an ADJECTIVE: “denoting or relating to products, services or interests (my emphasis) that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.” And it just might be because we naked apes can think up a veritable plethora of stuff (and really, have you ever experienced a plethora that wasn’t veritable?) to satisfy our lusts, erotica, the artistic expression of those lusts, is ripe for niche exploration. There is bound to be somebody out there with some of the same sexual interests, or close to them, that you have, no matter how ‘niche’/kinky/non-vanilla they are. 

I know that I have made my way very well in niche erotica. For instance, I just placed this story at the House of Denial male chastity retailer (and am working on more for them right now). Chastity is undoubtedly a niche kink, but I found a place for my work at this site, was in fact, prompted to write this story because I followed some instinct to delve a little deeper into teasing, fem dom, a power-play dynamic.

Will writing niche erotica, hell, niche anything, work for you? Who knows? All we can ever do is try. But I can tell you, although there might be a smaller, more specific population for niche content, if you manage to lock-in with people who have a particular penchant for something, you might find yourself a rabid audience who might tickle your coffers.

And really, who doesn’t want their coffers tickled?

Writers Chill! A Lesson in Humility: Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously

By
Ralph Greco
-
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Here’s a joke from Steven King that I’m slightly paraphrasing:

 A priest, a nun, and a rabbit walk into a bar. The rabbit looks around and says, “I think I’m a typo.”

That’s writer’s humor for ya.

Thank God somebody in this godforsaken shutdown anything-but-normal ‘new’ normal world is trying to make a funny! From all I read daily across blogs, see on the news, hear people twatting and posting about, very few of us seem to take our sense of humor out for a walk these days. Everybody is poised for a protest, looking to show off their offense, wanting to cancel somebody for saying something. Is it Covid’s influence or, could it be that because of social media infestation, we feel our every utterance is worth uttering, and we can rail when we want at everything we want?

Can’t we all just chill out? Take it down a notch? 

I feel if anybody should lead the charge of amping down one’s ego, letting go of the supposed righteous indignation, ‘taking a chill pill,’ it should be us, erotica writers, actually, all creative types. Let’s face it; we are some of the worst culprits of taking ourselves too seriously.

Yes, what we do is important… to us, but I hate to burst your bubble; your scribblings, songs, sculptures, or flower pot set-ups are never going to be as important to somebody else as they are to you. As firmly as you may hold them, your opinions are just as valid as anybody else’s… but not more so. You might get paid for your naughty stories, or singing (wonderful, I say!), and the very nature of doing well in your profession might allow you a little more spotlight than the best janitor in the local high school, but what we create, true to our lives and center to our existence.

I know you are trying to sell yourself at the same time, protect your reputation, and self-worth against constant rejection. But nobody really wants to hear anybody going off these days, when all anybody seems to be doing is going off about some new injustice or railing on Twitter about a post.

Take it down a notch, people, please!

Let me leave you with this example from my writing life that reiterated the need for humbleness, for taking one’s head out of one’s ass, for chilling…

The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd

I have made some (a very little some) professional headway in the playwriting field. I haven’t much gone beyond community theater. Still, I have been lucky enough to have had many of my one-acts produced and have had my words acted/spoken by some wonderful people under the direction of other wonderful people in equally wonderful theaters across the US. I have been humbled at each turn, truly; I love “The Roar of the Greasepaint-The Smell of the Crowd” (look that quote up, it’ll be worth what you find). But only once have I been asked to sit in on a rehearsal of one of my plays. I never thought to get in their anyway, figuring the rehearsal was the domain of actors, director, lighting, and sound crew. But I was asked this one time and gladly, humbly, accepted.

I loved it. In fact, the process was an eyeopener as I was able to cut some words, whole passages in fact, after I saw the actors deliver my meaning with a look or the director through some subtle blocking with better intent than my lines could.

But I had been told time and again that writers are especially forbidden in rehearsals because most can’t take a word being changed or a few lines cut, where I welcomed the revisions (and if you aren’t revising, as I have cautioned in another column, you aren’t doing the writing right).

Indeed, ‘putting up’ a play is a unique process for a writer of that play since you are collaborating. Each person’s contribution is equally important (yeah yeah, without my words, there would be no play to perform, I get that, but how would it be performed without actors, directors, crew, and audience?).

My point here, as it relates to the title of this piece and the theme this time out… we all could do well with taking ourselves out of the center of the drama of life, realize we are but one small voice in the great din. Stay true to your opinion, even share it if you like (although I do believe there is too much of this happening these days to serve anybody, really) but remember, even if somebody says something that really gets your goat, rubs you the wrong way way (because everybody wants is to be rubbed the right way right?) realize, please, that it’s just an opinion.

Keep your head down, get to work, take it down a notch.

Sex Writing: How to Write Naughty Dialogue

By
Ralph Greco
-
sexy dialogue

The Art of Writing Dirty Dialogue for Erotica Writers

What somebody says can be just as interesting and downright disgustingly perverted (in a good way) as what they do. Or so I try to write in my fiction. Sure, there are those scenes where I have two or more people baring their pink parts for various tickles, touches, and teasing, in complete silence… save a moan or two. But lots of times, my characters talk a good bunch of the naughty before they get down, especially when one character is doming another and might want to mentally tease and taunt well before they do so physically.

So, writing naughty dialogue is very important to bring your characters to life and add a bit of sizzling foreplay to your scenes.

How to Write Naughty Dialogue

How do you do it then?

IDF-ingK!

Ok, that’s not true. I do know. But as with everything else I have imparted so far in this series, how you write a few lines of back-and-forth banter or a long single-character diatribe should come organically from the scene you set up and how you believe your characters might sound.

Sure, there are those instances where somebody might be enacting a little role-play and therefore speaking in a manner they usually don’t (baby talk, stern master or mistress, maybe even with an accent they don’t actually have). But, as you do with all of your erotica, you should be searching for truth in your words, be they dialogue or description.

When a character opens their mouth, they should sound like themselves or the selves you have established along the way. Unless they are possessed or schizophrenic… or again, playing a role.

Masters of Written Word

One of the masters of the written word, Steven King (no slouch in the old writing department) makes a mention in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft that he’s as cautious of the overuse of adjectives as he is with the ‘he said,’ ‘she moaned,’ ‘he admitted,’ kind of dialogue descriptors. He does have a point. That extra stuff added at the end of some dialogue can slow it down. I think once you have established who is speaking to who, then you can probably let go of the ‘he/she said’ stuff unless a character is doing something specific when speaking that you want to have your audience ‘hear.’

“So, you admit you’ve been a bad boy,” Juanita said, giving Tom’s tight testicles another flick with her belt.

That kind of a thing.

Dialoging Sounds

I have gone whole pages with just dialogue written, nothing else. I am also fond of letting loose with a “SMACK” or a “TITPAT” to describe the sounds a paddle makes on a pair of bare buttocks or just the drumming of fingers across the inside of a thigh. So, you might come to want to create dialogue as much as sound, and we all know, with erotica, there are many options for sound.

I mentioned the fantastic writer Roger Zelazny a few columns back and his masterful ability for writing dialogue so economically, but at the same time so chock-full of a character’s voice, I came to know the men and women who populate Zelazny’s infamous Amber Chronicles as much by their actions as from their repartee.

You can aspire to be as good as Zelazny, but good luck getting to his level… or Steven King, for that matter. These dudes are masters of the craft.

Do What You Do Best

Lastly, you don’t have to write dialogue at all. What you scribble forth is your baby, birth and nurture it the way you see fit. Or your dialogue could just be to get you from one heavy humping scene to another and not be all that interesting or informative.

It is all up to you. I am just saying if you feel dialogue is right for a particular story you are writing, stay true to the characters. Try to listen to how they speak (you can even read the dialogue out loud if you want, sometimes hearing it helps to determine its authenticity to your ears) and don’t get mired in having to hold your reader’s hand every step of the way with who is saying what when.

How To Diversify Your Online Presence As An Adult Content Creator

By
Valeriam Vincent
-

Photo by  Brooke Lark on Unsplashed

 If you’re an adult content creator, the best way to grow is learning how to carefully cultivate your online presence. That includes using different social media platforms to your advantage, branching out of your target audience, and raising brand awareness. 

Here are the best tips for diversifying your online presence, attracting new and retaining regular fans, and increasing revenue. Read on!

Use Multiple Platforms

With adult content creation expanding and reaching previously unimaginable revenue heights, countless platforms that prioritize this type of content have popped up. From posting on OnlyFans to camming or working with different porn sites, your options are endless.

While not all of these platforms are necessary to use, utilizing a few will ensure your audience reaches an all-time high. For one, most platforms have entirely different user bases, so using various will give you access to varied audience pools. 

The secret to succeeding in this type of multitasking? Doing research and tailoring content to the specific guidelines and user bases of particular platforms. By doing so, you can attract different types of consumers on different platforms, maximizing both your exposure and profits. 

Another key point to remember is that you should promote your content on every platform you use. So, if you post content to OnlyFans and work with a porn site, make sure that audiences on both platforms know where to find more of your content. That way, your exposure will increase exponentially, and you will have a chance to grow your presence on both fronts. 

Use Social Media Platforms

Most social media platforms have strict guidelines for posts containing nudity or any other type of sexual connotations. As a result, creators often neglect them when building their online presence. 

However, the fact that they don’t allow explicit content doesn’t make these platforms useless. In fact, they give you a perfect chance to connect with your fans, build a meaningful relationship with them, and expand your reach. 

For example, you can use Reddit and RedGifs to talk to your fans, post teasers, promote your content available on other platforms, and so on. These sites are milling with potential subscribers, and it is up to you to entice them to join your fanbase. 

Besides these two platforms, you can even take a more traditional route and use Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. If you play your cards right, you can utilize them to post teasers and drive your followers to subscribe and see more on an adult platform of their choice. 

The key to success is analyzing each platform, its usual user base, and what type of content it allows. With this info, you can create a content plan that will take advantage of all perks of different platforms and give your exposure a huge boost. 

Create Your Own Website

For the vast majority of adult content creators, making their own website is an unattainable dream. After all, you need coding knowledge to run a website, and most hosting providers do not allow adult content. 

What many of them don’t know is that there are numerous platforms — such as Vicetemple — that allow you to make and run your own website with zero coding knowledge on your part. Plus, they offer hosting and domain services tailored specifically to adult creators. Thus, there are no limitations to what you can post or sell. 

Besides that, you can also pick a theme fitting for an adult website in both aesthetics and user-friendliness. Integrating your own store and offering special feeds and content to subscribers are only some of the ways the Vicetemple themes let you have full-control over your brand and image. 

So, there are ways to own a successful website without dedicating all your waking hours to maintaining it. And the advantages are incredible. From building your brand by owning a unique domain to giving your customers access to all your content in a single place, there are numerous ways to profit. 

You can even integrate your content from other platforms into your website. In other words, there is no need to stop posting there to focus on your site alone. All platforms can be linked, so your customers can choose how they want to enjoy your content the most. 

Summing Up

The adult content creation industry offers you incredible opportunities for growth and profit. To make the most of them, it’s essential to diversify your online presence and reach out to fans on different adult and social media platforms. By doing so, you will vastly expand your reach, appeal to new audiences, and increase your revenue. 

So, it’s time to step out of your comfort zone and take advantage of everything the adult entertainment world offers. Experiment with different options until you find a combination that works, and watch as your brand grows!

Top 5 Tips To Learn About Writing When You Have Lots Of Work

By
Ralph Greco
-
Photo by SHVETS production from Pexels

And suddenly, I am flush with money and work.

This is the way I’ve often found it in the freelance writing game. I can go for a whole month with no gigs, starting to worry about scrounging for the pennies, and then BAMMO (just like Batman), I have almost too much work to negotiate.

It’s feast or famine around my neck of the woods more often than not, and presently I find myself feasting.

But it won’t last. Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to declare that I will, at least this time, learn a few things (“Sure sure, Ralph,” I hear you say as you pay my head knowingly).

Here are my Top 5 Lessons To Learn About Writing Work When You Have Lots Of Work

1.)   Save money.

This is one you’d think I’d learn time and again, but alas, I get a few coins a’janglng, and they either fly out of my finger to pay past bills, or I treat myself to my usual round of coke and escorts (ok, that’s a joke). But I do have a propensity for spending too much money on books, toys (and no, not even the vibrating kind), and records. I have to remember to save some money as I make some money, so I have some money for those times I’m not making all that much money.

2.)   Keep looking for work.

Even inundated, trying to find my footing (and time to write) under a tsunami of work, I need to keep my eyes and ears open for more of it. None of us should become complacent when we get a little breathing room, suddenly become lazy thinking that we don’t need to keep looking as intensely as we always have for jobs, or slack off keeping in touch with an old client who may have the promise of work down the line. Sure, you need to pay attention to the job at hand (which will lead me to my third point in a second), but we always need to keep our minds on getting more.

3.)   To that work at hand?

Work it hard as you do all other work but remember, to schedule it around everything you are already doing. This is my biggest weakness; I have a terrible mind (not a ‘beautiful one’ at all) for scheduling, keeping to calendars, prioritizing. But if a mountain comes suddenly sliding into you, you probably are going to have to find a way to start climbing it. Which leads to…

4.)   Don’t forget the work you already have.

This isn’t so easy to do, especially if the work you already might be doing is something you’ve been at for a long time, or it pays you less than the new work coming in (which so often happens as older work might be stuff you priced out way back before you had grown your reputation and skills to where they are now). But this older work needs to be considered and kept to as much as the new.

5.)   Keep on the new employer for more/new work/building your relationship.

Whoever has come to lay some new stuff in your lap, or whomever you have courted to get it, they are going to need to be stroked a little, at least at the beginning First and foremost, you do this by doing a great job…which, you should be doing all the time anyway. But for a first-time client, I go a little above and beyond, keep the communication fluid and consistent, so they can get me pretty much get me as they want me (at least in the beginning), and stroke the client as much as I can without having to throw-up in my mouth too often.

All too soon, I’ll be in the ditch again, scrambling and worrying about work. For now, though, with a bit of a surplus of it, I need to keep my head and maybe learn a few valuable lessons, so there isn’t such a deep difference between the busy times and the quiet.

The question is: will I take these five tips to heart? Your guess is as good as mine.

 

Climaxing All Over Your Pages

By
Ralph Greco
-
Photo by Alexander Ant from Pexels

Assuming none of your characters reached orgasm during your foreplay scene (which is as legitimate a way to write it as any other) or didn’t get through the seduction and realize they didn’t really like one another when all was said and done, you could very well find yourself on the slow burn to climax. Now, whether the orgasm/money-shot/end of the seduction/foreplay will as much mark the end of your story, be just one bright, naughty passage you write with more to follow or happens early on, or it will rush at your reader in one wild night of your characters first meeting, managing into a local bar backroom where they roll each other naked across a busted bag of confectionary sugar and reach nirvana, who can say?

Your intention might very well be to get your characters on edge but keep them from coming. I tend towards this kind of setup in lots of my short erotic fiction. Sure, I have plenty of good old bed-rocking orgasms in my pages (and in my life, thank you very much, sometimes even with another person in the room!), multiples even when possible, gooey, fun, creative moments I hope are white-hot to the reader. But there are plenty of times I only allow my characters as far as seduction and foreplay, setting up a great big tease, searching the thematic questions about whether or not these two people will meet again, or even if they even want to. I tend toward this kind of ambiguity in my writing, as it is infinitely more interesting for me. But for those of us who want to write a good climax, here are some thoughts.

I’d say tickle into the climax at least a bit of what you have already let the reader know about your characters. They have spent some time getting to know one another, let them, and your reader, benefit from what’s been learned. For instance, during the seduction and foreplay, if you have made it clear that one or even both of your characters are aroused by roleplay, you might want to use this knowledge in their climax. Conversely, don’t throw in an unsubstantiated surprise here or reverse someone’s behavior unless warranted. A sub, suddenly turning dom as they come, need have at least some impetus why they might suddenly change their approach in mid-stretch. Although, if you write it right, one character suddenly so turned on when roiling up to orgasm suddenly traipsing down a path they never have can have arresting erotic possibilities.

Other parts of the climax to consider are:

  • Do you want your characters to climax during the same scene?
  • Do you want them to orgasm simultaneously?
  • How descriptive might you want to get in the specifics of what goes on and what comes forth?
  • Is there more to the climax than just the release? Some admission, a revelation, or something beyond human experience that occurs when one or both of your characters come? Climaxing is a great big body-rocking occurrence; I can easily see it flipping the ON switch to someone’s heretofore secret superpower.
  • As mentioned, will this be the end of your story, or are you planning a denouement?

If your dealing with more than a short story here, this climax might just be one of many that will occur across a story with multiple plot lines. Or the start of your story might be two people roiling towards their big moment, coming, then the rest of the tale opens up about what happens now.

As much or as little significance you give to the climax is again your call. I just think, like seduction and foreplay, the climax is important and can be damn fun to write. Remember, lots of readers are following along step by step with you here. They get heated to the appropriate passages you give them and might indeed allow for the old one-handed tickle when you get to your climax.

No matter how you write it, you want to keep true to these readers.

To journal or not to journal? What’s Your Preference?

By
Ralph Greco
-
pexels by pixabay

Here we fall onto another one of those areas I can’t rightly advise you on from any true personal experience. I don’t journal. I don’t on a plane. In the rain. In a house with a mouse. I just don’t.

Do you? Have you never but have been thinking of starting? Have you heard your fellow writers espouse its virtues, friends prompting you, teachers assigning you to get to it for this semester? Maybe, you want to dip your toe into writing for the first time and feel this is a good way to begin?

Sure, get to it, I say.

Why don’t I Journal?

First of all, despite some high-school, and college creative writing teachers indeed assigning journaling to me, non-writers assuming I do it all the time, and plenty of well-intentioned folks giving me journals as gifts (and I’ve received some very nice ones, over the years) I’ve always felt that the writing I do pretty much during most of my day, is all the writing I want to do. I’m not talking about keeping a pad and pen handy at my bedside table, or in the car; I am constantly scribbling down ideas, turns of phrases, snippets of conversations I know might lead me into interesting territories for stories, etc. (and this practice of having pen and paper handy is one I can and do advise).

But the self-reflective ruminations that journals are supposed to pull from you (don’t get on my ass here, I know one can write anything they like into a diary, and I talking about diary-like scribbling here), I feel I’m already slipping that into my fiction, blogs, poems, plays and songs, especially my songs). I’ve always worried that, for me, journaling would lessen the vitality of my ideas or see me puking forth so often in a diary that I’d be too exhausted to write any of these thoughts in my ‘real’ writing.

Pretty much what I have against blogging for oneself or tweeting all day long.

Yes, I know the argument could be made that prompting a steady flow of stream-of-conscience writing keeps one better in touch with one’s emotions. That all writing keeps one’s writing muscles in shape. I can’t argue either point, but none of this is true for me, or more precisely, I am not going to start journaling now when I have never done it, and certainly have enough writing to keep me busy during the hours of the day when I am trying to earn my bread-and-butter money.

For some people, the only writing they ever get to, is what they manage when they journal. And being an old curmudgeon eschewing technology as often as I do, I certainly like the idea of putting pen to paper for whatever reason (I love how it so often shocks people to see me sitting in a Starbucks or some other over-priced too-cool-for-school coffee spot, working furiously on the papers of a manuscript, or actually reading an honest-to-goodness book!)

Really, it’s not for me to tell you to journal or not; if you have read any of this column before, you know by now I would never demand that a writer has to do this or that. Whatever gets you there, short of smoking crack or going out chopping up city sanitary workers, burying them in your basement and then writing what you feel is authentic serial killer short stories, is fine by me. (Actually, if you are smoking crack, that’s fine by me, but leave those city workers alone ok?)

To journal or not to journal, that’s up to you.

Meta Verse Erotica?

By
Ralph Greco
-
Photo by Designecologist from Pexels
Photo by Designecologist from Pexels

I am not part of the cult of social media personality; I have never been. I do not really know how Facebook, Instagram, etc., work nor have I ever wanted to. And I am truly blind to why Facebook is switching its name to Meta and what that word even means (as well as what the hell “Metaverse” means). But as I have too often seen in the insidious recent rush of technology, I fear there might be some infiltration of that which I do not know nor engage in to my business of scribbling naughty little words across papyrus with my stylus under candlelight.

I’m not a Luddite, but I do grow a bit squirrely round the edges now in my 6th decade with anything that seems to have the potential to create ever more divisions between folks. My great friend, podcast co-host, and a writer you should be reading right now (and contributor as well to this wonderful sexpert-a-verse), M. Christian, is the futurist I go to when I come up against the world changing in ways I do not understand. Asking him about the conversion of Facebook to Meta and what meta is in general, Chris pretty much reiterated what I thought I knew in that there are folks who enjoy an online experience, no matter what it is they are experiencing, as much or more so than they do going out and about in the world to experience whatever it is they like to experience. What Chris warned, and something we have all come to see for sure, is if one immerses oneself with one population, one news source, one religion, one whatever-it-is, then one can get rather indoctrinated in one set way of looking at things. I don’t care where you come down politically (or if you are like me, you don’t come down politically at all) or what your belief system is; I agree with Chris, one can all too easily spin down a rabbit hole one might never see oneself free from the more one goes looking for that damn rabbit.

In the ‘new’ Meta world that Mark Zuckerberg seems to be morphing his old Facebook into, it seems folks who like to be online will be able to dive even deeper online. The question then becomes, if being online is so rewarding, easy to facilitate, and keeps us inside where we already want to stay anyway (pandemic or not), why would those predisposed to being online ever want to interact with the non-online world? And extrapolating from this—and for my private bread and butter—I wonder if anyone in the Meta world or even tickling into it from time to time will want to read my naughty little stories, or any stories in general. Will what Chris and I labor at and many more writers like us try to make their living from being soon regarded as an antiquated static resource, not at all interesting to the generation living solely online?

In a world where you can set your avatar to any appearance (and well protect your actual appearance in the process), speak a language you don’t normally but can easily translate, buy goods and services from an exchange of something other than the coin of the realm, and never leave your Barcalounger when doing all of this, the digital world you could come to live can all too quickly become one of your own making.

Will anybody want the fictions or anyone else’s makings if one is Meta?

Please don’t hate me, Grammarly, but I really don’t give a f***

By
Ralph Greco
-
Image by AxxLC from Pixabay

I just hit a “Centenary Superhero” milestone with Grammarly (don’t worry, I didn’t know what it was either). In using the basic grammar program, which I do indeed recommend, I get reports on my writing from the company all the time. In addition to this new milestone, I am presently 82% more productive, 29% more accurate, and use 93% more unique words than the rest of Grammarly’s users.

Well, whoopie for me, huh?

Actually, between you and I, I don’t rightly give a rat’s dingus. If I could stop Grammarly’s insidious checking in and reporting on me, I would. I don’t need their tickling of my taint. I don’t rightly care how I measure up against others. I don’t even want to keep score on what I’ve managed to do.

This writing thing, penning naughty words, and mainstream stuff, is my livelihood. I am not in a competition or along for the ride of social media approbation. Sure, I want an audience. Sure, I love it when people connect with a story or come back to me and tell me how something they read of mine gave them a nice warm feeling (just as long as I don’t have to help them wipe up). And I especially like when I give forth on a class of would-be writers, as my buddy and fellow writer M. Christian and I have done on a few occasions at the kink conventions we have presented at… and hopefully will present at again with all this COVID b.s. is over. But I don’t care a whit about the opinion of some algorithm.

This Grammarly update speaks to a more significant dilemma of our modern world, and one I shan’t really dive into here. But generally, because of social media infecting our lives as it has (or more precisely how we have infected ourselves with it), people find it very hard to do anything without a response. People sign-up for exercise programs and eat well campaigns, enjoy Zoom instructions, pretty much get together across digital platforms consistently.

Sure, I’ll give you the pandemic. I know that has pushed us into isolation more than anything we have ever experienced on the planet. But why do we need confirmation so bad, the return tweet, and the ‘like,’ the fellow dieters? And why would Grammarly think I’d give a… well… a rat’s dingus, that I surpassed one of their milestones?

I’m too busy writing, which you should be too!

123...5Page 1 of 5

EDITOR PICKS

POPULAR POSTS

POPULAR CATEGORY

© Copyright 2019 - Sexpert Media. All Rights Reserved. For permission to syndicate content, please contact us.