I love the idea that people who read erotica are more likely to pick up a pen and write some of their own too. Taking your fantasies and putting them down on paper can be a tremendously joyous thing. But writing erotica can be nervewracking too, even if you’re an experienced writer in other, less sex-focused areas. This week’s guest blogger is just that: a professional writer who recently turned his hand to penning something sexy. He got in touch to offer a guest post about the uniquely nervewracking (and fun!) act of writing erotica for the first time. So if you’ve been tempted to try your hand at it and need a little nudge to get started? This post is for you!

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Big news, team: we’re not making resolutions this New Year. We’re not telling ourselves to change our body shape or stamp out bad habits. We’re not asking each other if we’re doing Dry January or nagging people about how they live their lives. We’re not making resolutions this New Year, we’re embracing dreams.

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Just putting it out there: it is very cool and fun to date me. I promise. No, it’s not a total nightmare of reading posts about yourself and wondering whether you’ll get a good write-up, or listening to me bang on about butt plug brands until you’re entirely turned off butt plugs forever. It’s really cool and fun, and I am not in any way a total shambles.

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Most of what I write is true. But ‘Truth’ itself is much more slippery. Truth with a capital T can never come from the mouth of a single person, and it never comes in the form of a story, because the act of telling a story involves shaping and curating truth: picking which bits stay in and which bits get cut. What makes a story, when it comes to non-fiction, isn’t Truth but perspective.

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The problem with suddenly becoming single is that it throws up a bunch of dating problems that I very much hoped I would never have to deal with. I appreciate that absolutely none of these are serious – they are all things I’ll happily overcome, about which my whining is intended to be no more than a brief and amusing distraction as you trip down whichever path your Wednesday happens to be taking. My current mantra, as life gets harder, is ‘I like doing difficult things.’ Doing difficult things is incredibly empowering, and having the freedom to do those things excites me. Nevertheless, as I start to explore the ways I will throw myself into the exciting hard stuff, I can’t help but bump up against dating problems that I genuinely do not want to tackle. Here is a brief (and likely non-exhaustive list) of things I can’t be arsed with.

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