The Crime Scene vs. The Sex Scene

I really had to share this thought of the day.

Today I went to lunch with a very good friend. We met through a local writing group, which a few of us then left as we felt it wasn't quite ticking the boxes for what we wanted out of a writing group, and sort of made our own one up. This way we've actually got to know one another, and we believe this is important if we're then going to critique each other's work.

She's also a surrogate mum to me, and has helped me through my various dramas over the past couple of years.

We could talk all day and everyday I feel, we get on so well. We often message one another via Facebook or meet for coffee. (Not often enough sometimes.)

Today was no different, we met for lunch, but what I thought was particularly funny as our conversation moved to writing; we started talking about writing erotica - probably a bit too loudly in the middle of Frankie and Benny's, and we had no alcohol to blame it on either, only caffeine.

My friend confessed to writing something saucy, something she doesn't ordinarily do. She's not really a romance writer like me. She doesn't believe in happy endings. She said that this particular story just flowed from her - I'm constantly nagging her to stop the inner editor and just to write the damn thing. We joked that maybe she should write erotica, if it flowed so easily, but she said if she got published she wouldn't be able to tell anyone. Then we laughed a lot.

We discussed how, if we wrote crime, and described cutting a person up into gory pieces and stuffing him in a bin or burying him etc. etc. etc. not one of our friends would think 'hey, that's a bit weird/sick/sadistic'. They'd just think 'oh, clever." Yet, writing a saucy sex scene, friends and associates would instantly raise an eyebrow and ponder, is this her usual bedroom behaviour? Does she experiment for research purposes? Is she this kinky in bed, too? THAT came from her head!!!

Crime writers aren't criminals, therefore romance writers aren't necessarily, well, you know... well, not all the time anyway...

As a romance writer, I like to create a little bit of fantasy, a little romance, and heroic men that lets face it, just doesn't happen in reality.

W.O.W. - Writers Group

This is it! This is it! I am now, officially, a writer. Because, yes, I attended a writers group.

Okay - I am a writer, because I write. But it really was lovely to meet fellow writers and talk writing, and not feel like I was crazy. Bit like when I met Becky Black last Thursday!

Tonight there were seven of us, with a couple of apologies, so not a bad size.

And no disrespect to any of the members there tonight, but I did feel very newbie to it all, being one of the youngest. There was another woman of similar age and she had two children, a bit older than mine, but the others did seem like veterans. Some of them wrote poetry, a couple had self published, and two others particularly, like me, are trying to go down the 'traditional' route.

We're going to meet the first Thursday of every month. Unfortunately I won't be able to make the next one, as I'll be on hols, but I'll be sticking the rest in my diary.

I must admit I do value my online writery friends and their feedback, and I don't ever want to lose that. There are two people in particular I trust vehemently. I know how I'll receive feedback, (and it's not always good, but it's honest). It sounds daft, but we've learnt to work with one another, we work really well, bouncing ideas off each other etc. So, it will be interesting working with writers face to face, and I definitely want to contribute - but there is that worry how my contribution will be received? 

Suck it and see, as they say :D

At the moment, we're trying to come up with a name, and we've got Word-smiths of Weston (as we can't have Worle Writers) - hence WOW!