Topic Tuesday- "Why do you want to write?"

So Jeff's question this week was "Why do you want to write?" I enjoyed seeing the slightly different question; more often I've seen "why do you write what you write?" With this also came the challenge of writing at least 500 words (723 was told before adding this statement lmao). I'm participating in Nanowrimo at the moment- yeah, pushing out words is a familiar thing now :D. Please make sure to click the Topic Tuesday button at the bottom and read what my fellow writers think on this question.

I started writing shortly after I started reading. When my first grade teacher started teaching sentences, I quickly got to story writing. I've been allergic to the sun since I was born- I have about 15 mins I can be outside and be okay without extreme safety measures. Unfortunately my school didn't believe me and it's not something easily diagnosed by a doctor so I had no support there. I spent a lot of time in elementary school hiding in doorways with books during recess, trying to lessen my sickness. All that reading helped my writing.

Doubly unfortunately, living in a conservative area meant that I received abstinence-only sexual education and my parents did nothing to remedy this at home. This came into play as a teen, when rape experiences, coming out as bisexual, coming out as kinky all happened within two years, becoming a large, important part of my identity. My first girlfriend introduced me to Anne Rice's "The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty." I loved the kink, the fluidity of sexual expression. I even loved the fantasy, fairy tale nature, although part of me hungered to see erotica written for people like me- sexual fluid, kinky, not hung up by modesty and what I felt were outdated morals.

I knew that the bodice rippers in the grocery store had little for me; yes, I devoured them because they were the main thing I could get my hands on, but I was always left wanting. I'd tried my hand at "erotica" with a strange take off on the movie version of Stephen King's "Children of the Corn"- it got nicknamed "the caravan story" because I wrote it while on a church field trip called "caravan" lol.

However when I was 15 and found a GLBT youth group, it was there that my identity, politics, and activism all got involved with writing and my sex life. And while I knew of "gay book stores," as a minor I couldn't get into them, so my writing continued- to produce the erotica that I wanted to read and couldn't get my hands on otherwise.

The series/serial that has dominated most of my adult writing started off as a birthday present for a dom. He was living in a coffeehouse so anything beyond serving and mental play was mostly off-limits. I wanted to show him in fiction how much I wanted him, how much I wanted him to claim me, to mark me openly as his. We were on-again, off-again, and the offs killed me. I hoped with this gift that we might go somewhere that he could finally enjoy me mixing genital-based sexual activity and BDSM. That didn't work out. The coffeehouse closed and he had nowhere to go. I lost track of him.

By then I was a young mother, an unhappily wedded wife. Thankfully we met my Master at a goth club and became a semi-happy poly triad. Master encouraged me to return to writing. I wanted to make that story I'd written for my ex-dom better, into a complete story. Over the years, politics and activism blended more into much of "writing as a political statement" as well as "erotic romance for people like me." I wanted BDSM and romance, even if the romance didn't look like greeting card romance.

I continue to want to write what I do because even with the advent of FSoG, even with wonderful erotic romance writers like many of my good friends writing in the spanking, DD, and BDSM genres, there still isn't always as much pansexuality of characters and "BDSM that isn't focusing on being an introduction to BDSM" as I'd like to see in fiction.

And finally I got to the point where "wanting to write" is the same as "wanting to breath" for me- I'm just surviving, not living, if I'm not writing.