SpanishRed

Writing Psychology Week Day Two: Don't Be One Writer. Be Four.

There are many kinds of writerly types in my brain:

The poet—She’s the one who feels and creates. She’s scruffy and emotional. She doesn’t use rational thought much at all.
The edi...

This Week, We're Looking at the Psychology of Writing

Most of you know I volunteer at a dog shelter so I work with traumatised dogs. Some are terrified of humans. Some have converted that trauma into aggression. Some bite. Some run. All of those probl...

Breaking Rules Day Five: Write Words, Write Words, Write Words

It’s the second day of NaNoWriMo month—the annual event that’s supposed to help novelists all over the world to overcome their compulsion to over-edit. The event requires you to produce a 50,...

The Kink Scene Butterfly Effect

When I first joined Fetlife, I would have defined the kink scene as “Literally the most terrifying thing I’ve ever encountered.” I’d seen Eyes Wide Shut, so I knew you all looked like Naomi...

Breaking Rules Week: Adjectivitis

New writers usually suffer from the disease of adjectivitis—a near fatal condition that kills their work in five seconds flat. Adjectives sound impressive, so try-hard writers often throw them al...

Black Hippie Chick Day: Thoughts on Publication

Many of you are already ready to publish, so it seemed a good topic to cover for Black Hippie Chick Day.

When I began writing, my mentor told me to hold off on publication. He said, given the...

Breaking Rules Week Day Two: Sometimes Grammatical Mistakes Work Best

Emma Donoghue’s Room begins like this:

Today I’m five. I was four last night going to sleep in Wardrobe, but when I wake up in Bed in the dark I’m changed to five, abracadab...

2024-10-29 12:14:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Kink Parties Versus Vanilla Parties

Last night I went to a kink party. I met a domly Arctic Explorer, a brat in spectacular braids, and an Uber Dominatrix in fishnets, who ‘splained the benefits of dying in a zombie apocalypse. If ...

Poetry Week Day Four: Expect Failure

Poetry is considered one of the highest art forms, second only to music. Its capacity to evoke universal emotions is rare and precious. It’s not easy to achieve that much power. The average poem...

2024-10-26 10:52:56 +0000 UTC View Post

  Fetlife is the perfect dating website because it’s not a dating website

I’ve never used Tinder because I don’t have it in me to swipe through photographs as though I’m shopping for wallpaper on eBay. I have a friend who’s harnessed the site for what it was firs...

Black Hippy Chick Day: How to Destroy Your Work Absolutely

Writers have two selves:

The writer (That’s the magical, mystical, inspired “you” who puts down the first draft.
The editor (That’s the anal, precise “you” who fixes that draft...

What Oral Sex Gurus Get Wrong About Clitorises

Last week, I read a how-to post about oral sex by a self-professed expert. He said the best way to manage this rare skill is by looking a woman in the eye while simultaneo...

Poetry Week Day Two: Line Breaks Aren't as Easy as You Think

Conductors show the orchestra when they should play slowly, when they should stop, and when they should speed up. In poetry, we conduct “orchestras” too, and one of the ways we set the pace of ...

How Kink Turned My Body into a Home

In my teens, sex was sticky and dripping in guilt. You’re not meant to have sex before marriage, you know, so here’s a poster of seven STIs, one teen pregnancy, and 50 million kinds of ruinatio...

It's Poetry Week!

During Sylvia Plath’s first pregnancy, she described the child in her uterus to have “feet to the stars, and moon-skulled […] Snug as a bud and at home like a sprat in a pickle jug.” With t...

Why I Removed the "Looking For" Tab on My Profile

On Fetlife, everyone is looking for something or someone. The mindset is so integral to our online existence that it’s carved into our profiles with a carving knife under the “general info” t...

Authenticity Week Day Five: Seeing

When I was a little girl, my grandmother pointed at a wall and asked me what colour it was. I was a smart seven-year-old, so I naturally said white. She was an artist, though, and she’d spent a l...

It's Authenticity Week! This Week, We're Writing Colours

Every year at around this time, I develop an ungodly craving for oranges and lemons. I don’t know what to tell you. I crave orange juice in the spring, but I want the unadulterated type. It must ...

Consent is not a series of noes. It’s the safety that gives us the freedom to say yes.

Consent can seem like a restrictive thing in theory. If we laid out all our “don’ts” and “should nots” end to end, they’d make it around The Citadel 50 times: Don’t negotiate mid-scen...

Coping with Rejection

When I began attending my mentor’s workshop, one of my favourite writers there was a man called Roy. He earned his literature degree, then spent years writing a book of fiction. He threw himself ...

Masochism is Like Learning to Fly

Before I was old enough to fill out a bra, gymnastics was my favourite sport. I couldn’t balance on a beam or vault over a pommel horse, but oh, I could fly. I was a natural tumbler. When someone...

BlackHippyChick Day: Write What You Know

The first thing your English teacher probably taught you about writing in high school is “write what you know.” It’s an adage that you’ll return to no matter how far you evolve or how much ...

Storytelling Week Day Three: Writing Nonsense

In Alice in Wonderland, eating can make you grow and drinking can make you shrink. Caterpillars can smoke hookah pipes and little girls can float through keyholes. Welcome to the world of surrealis...

Storytelling Week Day Two: Symbolism

Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves is one of the most famous pieces of folklore in human history. It’s been sanitised, animated, and turned into poems. It’s even been turned into a few horror mov...

It's Storytelling Week with The Brothers Grimm!

In 1811, there was no Cinderella, no Snow White, and no Red Riding Hood. In 1811, poison apples and magic mirrors did not exist. No princes had gone out to find feet that fit in glass slippers. No ...

It’s amazing how effectively one person can alter a subculture.

When I created this profile back in 2014, being a good sub meant melting into a subservient puddle of jelly at the sight of a dom in a black T-shirt. Good subs were masters of pain. They always obe...

Muse Week Day Five: Finding a Thousand Muses

My favourite uncle started writing at the tender age of 75. Before I’d read his work, I expected to see what I usually see in these scenarios: Excruciating writing laden in typos but, incredibly,...

BlackHippyChick Day: Tone

One of the most famous passages in literary history goes like this:

“O Romeo, Romeo, my dude, wherefore art thou, bloodyhell?
Deny thy father, and refuse thy name, like, please, guy.
...

Meeting Our Muses Day Three: Honour Your Inner Muse

As a writer, I've always been taught to say the hard things: those that make the blood rush out of my head. For writing to change lives, you have to dig into the viscera of your rawest self where t...

A Sort-of-Subly-Mostly-Masochistic-Occasionally-Slavish-Oddball.

BDSM is not poly or monogamish or monogamous; not sadomasochism, age play, or mind games. BDSM is not rope, not fire, not wax or toys or degradation; not total power exchange, subservience or chast...