5 Things I Love About Writing "Disgusting" Fiction for Sad Girls
And also why you should embrace your bad reviews.
Every so often I humble myself by seeking out bad reviews for my first collection, Vile Men. I know that writers are often encouraged not to engage with negative reviews. I read with them with the understanding that people are allowed to review a book any way they want to, and I’m grateful for all the reviews that I receive.1
Reading a book and taking the extra time to tell people how you feel about is an extension of one’s time. Reviews are never a requirement, and I appreciate them all.
Yes, even the ones that claim that my work is “disgusting” and that my writing should have never been published. I feel the same way about plenty of books I read. They just weren’t the books for me. Likewise, my book simply wasn’t the right book for the person who reviewed it negatively.
It’s nice to get a feel for who my audience is and isn’t. I used to think that any normal person could read one of my stories and get something out of it, but over the last decade, I’ve found that most of my work isn’t catered for a broad audience.
And it’s the people who do reach out and leave positive reviews that really help me feel good about myself. It feels good to be seen and understood by these reviewers, so here are 5 things I love about writing the niche fiction that I do.
Weirdly Turning People On
I’ve always loved writing about sex. It’s pure carnal escapism. It’s fun. It keeps my libido healthy.
There was a point when I tried writing erotica under the pen name “Ruby MacIntosh”, thinking it’d be a path to easy money, but I found myself growing bored every time I tried to write a standard sex scene with cardboard cutout characters. I wrote one short story2 that received a couple of good reviews, but I couldn’t keep up the momentum. There’s a formula to writing erotica and churning it out that I simply can’t master. It stifles my creativity and I lose all ambition.
I do love writing a good sex scene, though. I prefer shorter scenes, ones with a dark buildup, some messed up characters, and a little dread mixed with a bit of eroticism.
In recent years, I’ve strengthened my ability to write longer scenes. Often times I get lost in the sex and I realize that my scene is longer than a paragraph. Sometimes I forget that my WIP is an erotic black comedy, so I suppose I can call myself an erotica author now. I dunno.
All that said, my favourite kind of compliment is when somebody tells me they loved the darkness of a story, but that it also turned them on, or make them “feel things”, or that it was the kind of fiction they didn’t know they needed. It makes me feel as though I’ve tapped into the same sort of psyche that V.C. Andrews did with Flowers in the Attic, or that Stephenie Meyer did when she churned out Twilight, or that E.L. James managed to find in the horrendous prose of 50 Shades of Grey.
It’s easy to criticise said novels, but there is something there that has a chokehold on mainstream readers, particularly women, and I really strive to keep finding it again and again and again, but in a slightly more upmarket way.
Being A Man
Most of my fiction comes from the female POV, but I’ve always been fascinated with men’s issues. Men deal with insecurities too, and it’s difficult to really understand them with the rigid set of “norms” that men have to subscribe to in order to be perceived as “masculine” in our society.
Oftentimes, I find male POV one of my favourites to write.3 There isn’t too much of a trick to it. Men and women are both human, and it’s not that hard to manifest one’s insecurities into the opposite sex, and it would be nice if male writers would just think logically before posting yet another attention-seeking “I WANT TO WRITE A FEMALE CHARACTER AND NEED TO MAKE HER SEEM REAL PLEASE HELP!!!” thread on Reddit.
Fellow writer Richard Thomas teaches my gender-reversed street harassment story, “Cat Calls” in his Contemporary Dark Fiction class. I’m always pleased to hear what the men have to say during the Q&A sessions. The discussions are always so positive and heartwarming, and I really do enjoy hearing how the story made them feel.
Most importantly, I do enjoy writing as a man taking a walk at night because that is just not a thing that I can do without getting paranoid.
Engaging in Social Commentary
I love politics and social justice war stuff as much as the next person, but I sure as fuck hate talking about it. Social media makes it all based on tribalism and talking points, and the last thing I want to do is share my POV and spend the rest of the day obsessively refreshing my feed waiting for the crazy people to come and argue with me.
It’s not engaging. It’s not a discussion. It literally is just a senseless keyboard war, an absolute waste of everybody’s fucking time and emotional energy.
I put all my commentary into fiction because it’s a more constructive way to share my opinion that doesn’t create a reactionary response. It shouldn’t, anyway. Fiction is art and art is meant to be discussed, and I really feel like you could have a reasonable discussion about any fictional story. It makes it easier to approach the nuances of any topic.
I mostly write about feminism, but I do also enjoy writing stories about toxic masculinity, capitalism, social media and other modern horrors.
Joining the Bad Girls Club
Growing up, I was ever an insecure girl, raised in a relatively religious upbringing. It wasn’t Evangelical by any means, but I was taught to obey elders and not to swear and to dress modestly. When entering my teens, I was given a bunch of books about hte importance of abstinence and that was bout the extent of my sex education from my parents. Thankfully, it was the early 00’s and I had access to the internet, so when I felt horny I’d end up reading sex guides on Good Vibes.
Looking back, I realize just how lucky I was, my religious upbringing being just alienating enough that I looked to feminism to rebel, but also sheltering enough that I expressed my sexuality in safe confines.
I never went to parties or flirted with boys. I was too socially awkward and insecure, so flipping through horror books in the library for weird sex scenes was how I tamed my raging hormones. I read in my room alone. Nature took its course. Eventually, I was writing my own sex scenes, living out fantasies on a page.
I’d share them with friends, but only the ones I was comfortable sharing. Never ones with full-on sex, but there was a build-up in them, a dread, a tension. My friends liked them. Their approval made me feel good.
Looking back, I was a bit of a tame smut peddler in high school. I find myself reflecting upon my teenage self and realizing that she wasn’t always a goody goody. she listened to Peaches in secret and understood the bad girl mentality.
Nearly all of my bad girl adventures were lived out on a white screen, and I’ve enjoyed every one.
Finding Fucked Up Girls Like Me
I used the term “fucked up” lightly because nobody is really normal. I also use the term “girls” in a universal sense, because I’ve met plenty of men who’ve read my work and resonate with it too. Ultimately, I do feel like I write what I call “sad girl fiction”.
It’s fiction for women who grew up reading Sylvia Plath and Girl, Interrupted.
It’s fiction for women who prefer the prince from Beauty and the Beast in his beast form.
It’s fiction for women who listen to Lana del Rey.4
It’s fiction for women who fall for villains more than love interests. Not because they think they can fix them, but simply because being bad is sometimes fun, and you don’t really learn anything about yourself without making a few mistakes along the way.
I love reading fiction that mirrors my own, fiction that inspires me to write my own fiction, and fiction that brings people from the depths. Sometimes they contact me. Sometimes they leave reviews of praise. Sometimes I befriend them. I never meet them in person but I connect with them through the realms of the internet, forever bonded by weirdness, sadness, and yes, a little bit of sex.
Pre-Order Ending in Ashes Now!
Each excerpt featured in this post is from a story in my upcoming collection of neo-gothic fiction, Ending in Ashes, which you can pre-order here.
Yes, even this review, because it pointed out a description I once thought was cool and was clearly overusing. I don’t use it anymore.
The story’s called “Suite Sadism” and is about a woman who gets a dude to break into her basement suite and do stuff to her. I really did my best to give it a fun twist, and I suppose in terms of erotica that it’s a pretty good read. Holy shit, is it ever boring, though. There’s a formula to erotica that I both love and hate. It’s like a three-act play but the acts are sex sessions and I just find the whole process of writing sex scenes so mechanical and boring. It’s really hard to give characters nuanced personalities, which is why I can’t be an erotica writer.
Some of my male POV stories include “Grin on the Rocks”, about the trail of events that cause a man to commit his first rape, “Slippery Slopes” and “Modern Ruins”, both stories about dads caving to the stresses of fatherhood, and “The Lantern”, a tale about an insecure man who finds purpose when he submits to the female serial killer.
I actually can only listen to Lana Del Rey’s first studio album all the way through, but I do like her music. All of her songs just sound the same and I get bored halfway into an album.
5 Things I Love About Writing "Disgusting" Fiction for Sad Girls
I really enjoyed this and now want to read your collection!