why i don't write porn.

it's time to earn my 18 and over designation.

i've been having an ongoing "discussion" with a guy - let's call him bob.

bob is a coworker of mine. it's the nature of colleagues who work in close quarters to talk about things other than our jobs every so often. as such, it was inevitable that the topic of my writing came up a few weeks ago.

now, i'm not ashamed that i write erotic romance, but am careful of who i mention it to because not everyone has a liberal mind. bob is not such a person---he's very forthright, and our conversations have many interesting turns.

but i digress.

in short, after sharing my hobby-hopefully-soon-to-be-career, bob now thinks i write porn.

he says it with a smile, and i don't get upset (that's what he's trying to do, you see---make me mad) but i can't help but wonder how many other people out there think that erotica is just porn for women?

sure, there are similarities---the sex, for one thing. there are naked bodies (sometimes one, sometimes multiple), various sexual positions and lots of really dirty words.

but there's a fundamental difference, imo.

anyone who's watched pornography, either online or on the boob-tube (hehe) knows that there is no plot, even when there is.

mostly it's just a women dressed up like a very inappropriate school teacher who visits the principal's office and says a couple of stilted lines then flips up her skirt, bends over his desk, and asks to get fucked. the entire point of watching is to get to the sex parts. no one wants to hear them talk about their feelings. we just want to see tits and ass and cock, right?

written erotica, on the other hand, is when we find out that that very average school teacher has been carrying a secret lust for her very proper principal. she finally musters up the courage to act on her feelings. there's a thing called back-story.

we get the sense that she's letting the reader into her private life and we take the journey with her. we learn why she always hesitated on making a move and what's motivating her to do it now.

yes, there's lots of very hot, very descriptive sex, but there's conflict. there's a reason she has decided to take that chance in that place, at that moment. there's emotional discovery along the way. those are the key elements that are intrinsic to the story.

in the world of pornography, sex is the be all and end all. you can flip the satellite stations, stop in the middle of a 'movie' and start watching. you don't care who the characters are, you just want to see them fuck in as many different ways as possible.

in the world of erotica, sex is just the means to an end. the characters drive the story. you feel something besides lust. you want to be that school teacher with her lover's hands all over her body. maybe she and her man find that elusive happily-ever-after, or maybe she finds out that he's not all she'd envisioned, even if he was a great lay. but at the end, she's been changed in some way. we've been changed.

get it now, bob?