Tag Archives: self-help

Writing Sex and Fantasy

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A while back, I spent several years working on a mystery novel that went nowhere. Actually, it went to an appalling number of agents and publishers. It just didn’t stay there. And I wrote a short story that was a mashup of The Wizard of Oz and Star Trek.

But when it comes to fiction that I actually got paid for, my experience begins and ends with smut. Erotica. A dirty book. Whatever you want to call it. Now, I’m a big fan of freedom of speech and free expression and erotic literature, but there’s no getting around it—it was filthy. No redeeming social importance whatsoever, which used to be something people who wrote erotica aimed for. But I’m a ghostwriter and I write what the customer wants. So, I performed my writerly duty on the smut patrol and was compensated—not handsomely, but compensated. Then I went back to my steady diet of self-help books. But I lusted for something more…entertaining.

(We will not now discuss the research needed for the smut assignment or how I conducted it. If you want to, you can assume I drew on interviews with some of my less-inhibited friends. Let’s just say that I needed to include corroborative detail to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. And think of ways to describe body parts other than “throbbing purple-headed warrior” and “quivering love pudding.” But I digress. (Bonus points for recognizing the sources I used in this paragraph.))

Then recently, I almost wrote another non-smut novel, or at least the outline for one with the likelihood of writing the book if the outline was approved. The project was a piece of fiction, 100,000 words of what I guess you’d call “paranormal romantasy,” which apparently is a Thing now. I’ve been looking for a fiction assignment. There’s nothing wrong with self-help—it’s my proverbial bread and butter. But there’s also nothing wrong with adding a little jelly roll to the mix.

I was on the shortlist for the assignment. I didn’t get the gig. But I learned a lot from it, mostly about myself.

Realistically, I shouldn’t have considered taking the assignment, even if they had selected me for it. I’m already working on a long project that will keep me busy for months. I really couldn’t guarantee that I could do the world-building and plotting that the outline required. (There are other kinds of plotting I have more experience with, involving sinister, gleeful laughter. But I digress again.)

So, if I had moved from the shortlist to the one-list, I could easily have gotten in over my head and done a piss-poor job of it. I might have let my current project slide. I might have been sabotaging myself. It could have ended very badly.

But, oh, I wanted it. The opportunity came up over the long Thanksgiving weekend, so I had plenty of time to wait for the offer to come. I found myself prewriting (aka sitting around staring into space). I named the main character. I toyed with what her paranormal power might be. I speculated about what worlds of the multiverse she would travel to. I contemplated who her love interest might be.

It was mental effort wasted. Or not wasted, exactly. I proved to myself that I have the writerly chops to engage with a major fiction project and come up with ideas. I learned how much I want to branch out into fiction. I discovered that I can still get excited over a potential piece of writing. (Not that I don’t like helping selves, but I could use a little variety. It’s slightly disturbing how much I enjoyed ghostwriting a book on flesh-eating diseases. Yet another digression.)

Would I write smut again? Sure. I don’t have a philosophical objection to it. I might someday even look into a job as a phone sex operator. It’s a work-at-home position (sorry not sorry) with no actual (physical) customer contact. But, no. I don’t think I could keep myself from snorting and giggling.

Romance has a similar effect on me, but combine it with paranormal fantasy and I think I can handle it—as I hope someday to prove.

Help Yourself

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I admit it. When I was younger, I used to read self-help books. You know the kind, ones with titles like Women Who Hate Women Who Love Men Who Love Women Who Hate Cinderella. Back in the day, most self-help books were targeted at women who wanted to know why their love lives were train wrecks or why their psychological conditions were train wrecks. (Apparently, they didn’t consider that their psychological conditions might be train wrecks because their love lives were train wrecks. But I digress.)

Nowadays, most self-help books are written for business leaders – excuse me, entrepreneurs – and have titles like Give Yourself the Power to Lead Right Now With Powerful Leadership Secrets From the Early Etruscans. The rest are some modern-day versions of Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, which I suspect the Early Etruscans knew something about too.

I don’t know much about business leadership except that I prefer managers who use a hands-off management style (for both business and interpersonal interactions). I also don’t know much about women’s love lives, except my own, which I don’t think would be appropriate for a self-help book. I do know a thing or two about psychological conditions and write about them every week in my other blog, Bipolar Me.

Nonetheless, I find myself in the perhaps-awkward position of writing self-help books in my guise as a ghostwriter. (Or disguise. I’m required by the company to use a pseudonym.) I haven’t tackled one on women’s love lives yet, but I have written a couple about life with pets, something kind of New-Agey about envisioning your future, and two sort of business-y ones about listening to your inner voice and setting boundaries. My latest endeavor, which I’m about to start working on, is a senior health book, about which I ought to know a bit more than I actually do.

Apparently, a lot of the books that people want to have written are some variety of self-help – parenting tips (titles like Why Your Teen Behaves Like a Teen and Why You Can’t Do Anything About It), investment advice (Become the Only Person in America Who Tries to Pay the Electric Bill With Cryptocurrency), and doomsday prepping (Apocalypse When? Build Your Own Bomb Shelter Using Wattle and Daub) being some of the most-asked-for topics. (Again, subjects about which I know nothing.) I put in requests for book projects with more mental health focus such as overcoming anxiety or dealing with your inner child. But no. I get inspirational titles.

I must admit, I hate inspirational books. If they’re not about succeeding in business without really getting a business degree, they’re about positivity.

What’s wrong with positivity? Well, first of all, it’s been hard for me to achieve for most of my life, seeing that I was diagnosed with depression for decades. I’ve never been perky and seldom gung-ho. In addition, I’ve always hated cheerleaders, both the pom-pom kind and the believe-in-yourself ones. I guess I just don’t believe it’s possible to think yourself to a better, more fulfilling life with daily affirmations that sound like something from Jonathan Livingston Seagull. (If I’m going to take advice from a bird, I’d rather it be a parrot. Although it could conceivably provide me with daily affirmations. But I digress again.)

In fact, I’ve been exploring self-help books that are about non-positivity (not that I’ve been asked to write any of that kind). But Barbara Ehrenreich, the noted author of Nickled and Dimed who died recently at the age of 81, wrote a book titled Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Another such book, which I’m reading now, is The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman. (Ehrenreich also wrote a book called Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, another one that I need to read, though probably not until I finish writing the self-health book.)

I sincerely do hope, though, that readers will get more out of the books I write than I did out of those that I read. I’d hate to think that all my good, if ill-informed, advice is going to waste.

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