The Dirty Dirty: Things We Keep A Secret

Do you have a fantasy you hold inside of you?
Afraid to say it out loud to yourself.
At times even blushing with embarrassment when just the thought enters your mind.

Of course you do.

We all do.

While you may think that I am about to divulge my secret itch for a rose quartz crystal dildo (yeah, I am into that spiritual love making good-good kind of sex) or reveal the age that I was when I accepted that I was a queer woman.

Nope.

My DIRTY DIRTY SECRET is tied to my professional ambition, interests and desires.

Here's the short of it:

I dreamt of becoming one of two things as a college freshman:
a screenwriter and film producer that lived in Hollywood or a photojournalist for a major media powerhouse like National Geographic with NYC being my home base.

Neither of those happened after college and it's a very long story as to why.

I stopped writing the rest of my twenties and barely even admitted to myself how much photography fascinated me.

Fast forward to my early thirties.
After experiencing my second emotionally tough lay-off as a school teacher, I began writing again.

However, this time, it wasn't anything too fun really. Just some poems, short plays, short films, and even shorter short stories. I became a woman who got paid to write advertisements which left little headspace for writing novels, TV pilots, and feature full-length films.

The fiction I did write, was safe. Wouldn't raise any eyebrows. Because lets face it, everyone can handle coming of age stories about little black girls growing up in the south. And when I wanted to really feel all genre-y I would write about teenagers that see ghosts.

Yet, deep down, I wanted to also try my hand at writing about sex.

Sex in all kinds of ways. From creative non-fiction to journalism to hard-core erotica.

Popular rhetoric is to, write what you know. And I know sex.
Granted, this isn't because I'm a sex champ or anything, its because it has always fascinated me.

Often times our passion and purpose is so closely tied to the corners of our lives and imagination that intrigues us. We spin our heads trying to discover our "life's work" when if we stood still, it would be right there. In our face.

However, there was some shame for me in this area.

I don't know when or why I declared myself a writer of young adult literature but at some point I did.

Insert: mouth in foot.

As much as I live for Cruel Intentions/Gossip Girl, its not a world I want to create as a storyteller when I am being honest.

I did however, want to be taken seriously as a writer. I didn't want to explain to anyone my motivation and justification for wanting to write about sex and erotic fiction.

I felt that it was going to come with too many questions. That my writer friends and non-writer friends would judge me. It was already a fight to be a writer, I figured why add, sexcapades to my niche list.

What's deeper is that as I've gotten older, I've really grown comfortable with my sexuality, sexual desires, sex-positive feminism and real life sexual experiences. My imagination is on tennnnn.

I just don't give a fuck anymore.

I've had enough relationships-situationships-experiences where the sex was bland or we were incompatible.

Now that forty is around the corner, I have no interest in holding back.

I say, "let's get it on" now with more frequency than ever before in my life.

And I think Lovely souls, this is why I am finally no longer keeping my writing spirit and penchant for kink a secret.

I am boldly and unapologetically writing sex scenes every week for free (you can get them HERE), and crafting stories about sexually liberated women who collect lovers along the way.

They stand firm in their sex positive reality. They are who they are. The women they WANT to be.

I suppose I am writing a piece of me in my characters. It may be cheating, but it feels ohhhh so good.

I knew once 2018 rolled around, I couldn't keep this secret any longer.

I've been waiting too long and playing it too safe to make my splash as a fiction writer and overall storyteller. It became high time that I got real honest about what fascinates me most and using those interests to springboard a writing career that I can be proud of and that feels in alignment with who I am.

These are the stories I want to tell.

I am aiming for a career like Roxane Gay. There's almost nothing she can't write, but almost no one can write about the interior lives of women as well as she can.

The cat's out the bag...

It's going to be one helluva ride.