Friday, October 27, 2017

Romance VS Erotica



Once upon a time I wrote a romance book and I hated it. Don’t get me wrong,romance is the best—the tension, build up, and strangely enough the insecurity on both people’s part. Most of all I love the flirt. The ‘I like you and I want you, but I can’t come out and say it because that would just make me creepy’. What makes most romance wonderful is the flirt. However, what I don’t love is the purple prose.
Who among us has ever described their vagina as a flower? Okay, I have, but in the context that I don’t have weeds there … don’t judge. Publishers have categories for their genres, and romance tends to be sweet and flowery. Stronger adult language oftentimes changes what would be a romance book into erotica.

Once labeled with that explicit R rating,the plot of the book then comes into question. Erotica is known for sex where the plot will often suffer but that is not always the case. Due to my inability to say “rod” over “cock” I will forever be given the side eye for substance. To be honest, the book I wrote was supposed to be sweet but not downright puritanical. Once the publisher hacked it to death with that red pen of hate, the story became unrecognizable. It took something away from me and the story to give in to that PG-13 rating. After that, I vowed to never bend to those flowery words that only Shakespeare could pull off. Instead I’ve decided to stick with my new-age heroine. “Take off your panties,” she demands of the hero, but with a wink first … you know, because she doesn’t want to fuck with his ego.

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