so you wanna write a sex blog...really?

Almost two years I started writing my pretty dumb things, which I don’t call a “sex blog,” but a “blog with sex.” And yet this identification is a petit form of self-delusion. Looking at this writing in a cold, clear light of unobfuscated analytic light, this blog is a sex blog, or it has become one, anyway.

This post is my 444th. I can’t even begin to estimate the number of pages, of sentences, of words that comprise those hundreds of posts. I can’t imagine how many times I’ve used the word “cock,” employed the adjectival phrase “fat-bellied,” or summoned a metaphor of birds taking flight, balloons on the rise, tsunamis crashing or fjords dropping to describe my orgasms. I can’t fathom how many synonyms I’ve found for “pink,” or how many times I’ve said “spelunk,” while not referring to actual caves. I have, on these pages, yowled, yawped, ululated, screamed, gutter-uttered and howled like a banshee. (I have, however, never, ever used the term “cum,” unless I was employing Latin or being sarcastic.)

The point of my piling up the virtual metric tons of my things, pretty and/or dumb, is to point out this fact: I know a thing or two about writing a sex blog, however reluctantly I came about writing one. In the past two years, I have seen my readership go from a slender handful of people to a great burgeoning swell of thousands daily. I have the readership of a nice-sized small town daily. It’s a testament to my writing, I like to think, as well as a testament to how many people Google “how to deep throat” and come here for instructions.

I like to think I make it look pretty easy. Good artists do that, make difficult things look easy, and I like to consider myself pretty good at this thing I do, all hubris aside. Let me tell you, especially those of you who think you want to write a sex blog: it’s not.

Sex blogs have a mighty attrition rate. Few, very few, live longer than six months. Most are dead within a year. I have seen many really good sex blogs sparkle and fade, shine klieg-light bright only to burn out fast. Some writers wrote until they solved their issue. Others found their anonymity compromised and fled. A few have been hounded into darkness. Most, though, just go gently into that good night. Writing that was formerly torrential slows to a trickle, that trickle becomes a dribble, and the dribble dries to…nothingness.

Recently, for a clusterfuck of reasons, I’ve been thinking about why I write what I write. What it means to me, and what it costs me. Part of this thinking has come about from being outed to my college student by malicious blogstalkers. Part of it has come from the recent PBS coverage of Google’s temporary losing of sex sites to restructured searches, and how PBS wouldn’t link my blog in its coverage, a choice that made me envision Bill Moyers looking at me and shaking his head sadly. Part of it has come from the numbers of people who come here, from my choice to put advertising and affiliateships on my site, and the necessity for me now to regularly create salacious content to delight and instruct all of you, as well as to bring me cold, hard American cash. Why the risk? I think. Why the choice? I wonder.

Much of my pretty dumb pensiveness stems from my experience that as Donny and I grow emotionally intertwined, and as more and more people read me, and as I make more money from my site, I find that I am less willing to offer up my sex life for your ready consumption. It’s hard to write a sex blog when you feel conflicted about writing about your sex, and this conflict rests at the base of the high sex blog attrition rate.

The biggest fantasy that mainstream porn sells is that sex happens without emotions. Clearly, some filmmakers, like my friend Tony Comstock, challenges that notion, and I thank them for it. But in essence, what mainstream porn presents over and over is sex in an emotional vacuum. The zipless fuck doesn’t exist—however much we want it to, and now that I think about it all more deeply, I suspect that this zipless desire is part of our fantasy of the prelapsarian idyll, that halcyon time/space when people had zipless fucks because they didn’t wear clothes, real or metaphoric. In real life, though, sex carries psychic resonance. In real life, fucks zip loud.

And here’s the painful and beautiful truth: you can’t write about sex without it ringing a cacaphony of psychic bells. As soon as you commit erotic keystroke to computer screen, you’re signing a contract that makes you think and feel something, usually buried deep inside your fecund mind. Most people find themselves unwilling to carry that burden of revelation, to share it with the world, and to expose themselves in the multiple ways they have to in order to write about sex for very long.

Not only does writing about sex change the way you think about sex, but it changes the sex you have. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been fucking my lover and simultaneously narrating in my head our sex. It’s a weird fucking sensation, this double consciousness of doing and narrating, and it gets in the way of really enjoying the fucking. All of a sudden, the fucking is “about” something. It has to fit into a narrative structure. It’s limited, predetermined, finished before it’s over, and my pleasure with it. It’s a fucking loss. A loss that keeps on losing.

There are hosts of reasons not to write a sex blog—reasons I’ve outlined here, and ones I’ve hinted at. You can—and probably will—be read by someone you don’t want to read your writing. You will experience the big fat Freudian fear/wish dynamic about readership, both hoping that people will read and being anxious when they do. You will feel compromised, you will feel unsettled, you won’t easily be able to identify why. You will feel like the girl in the middle of the fantasy gang-bang, both titillated and shamed, at least if you’re anything like me. And then you'll feel as if some Japanese tour bus is driving through your bedroom and snapping pictures. It's a tad disorienting to feel as if the digital world is gaping at your cervix through the speculum of your blog. Not everyone can, or should be, an Annie Sprinkles.

It’s fucking hard to write honestly about fucking. However, I will tell you this: it’s worth it. At the end of the day, or in the middle of it, when I think about what would mark my presence on this wet blue earth if a safe dropped from the sky and squashed me flat as Wile E. Coyote, a few things come to mind: my friends and my lover, my dog, the students I’ve helped become better writers, and this blog. I’m proud of what I’ve written, and I’m proud of it all in no small part because I’ve written it at great personal price.

When I think about what has made me the basically happy, if somewhat stressed out, person I am today, I come up with two major points: my therapy and this writing. Catharsis is write. If you’re up to the change, the change will come.

It ain’t easy, this writing sleazy. It’s dragging the bumps in the night into the unblinking and faceless virtual light, but that—just that—if you can do it honestly and thoughtfully, with compassion to yourself and others, and then do it once more with feeling, you’re doing some very good work indeed. At least, I think so.

Comments

[erica]

I love how you mentioned that writing has changed the way you have sex. That's an incredibly honest thing to say, to admit to, because as much as sex writing, I believe, isn't all about escapism, it tends to exist in a world in which sex is the most important thing, or at least the most intense and feeling thing, that it exists in its own domain. But truthfully, it doesn't -- it's in a dialogue with many other aspects of life, and I love that you recognize that.

As you say, the psychic component of sex is inseparable from the physical, but it's also fundamentally inseparable from sex writing -- at least, sex writing that is genuinely erotic. You can't read about a sexual experience and feel arousal if you don't believe that the arousal was also revealed to the fuckers themselves, so to speak. If I read a story about sex and feel that it's entirely directed at getting me off -- that the writer is in fact calculating my levels of arousal without actually having felt those feelings themselves -- then the whole enterprise feels hollow and useless. Your blog is far from that.

[saratoga]

Ditto for FemDom activities. Knowing they may well be written about makes for some weird experiences as a male submissive being played with. Precisely the sort of double consciousness of which you write.

And, like you, I find it very rewarding for my relationship, and the growth in my observations and insights about the D/s lifestyle I share with my Mistress.

Yes, I can definitely relate, and I don't think I write a sex blog.

-saratoga

[Dee's Joe]

I've been writing my sex blog for over a year and never put this much introspective thought into why. It's become as much a part of me as the sex about which I write. I enjoyed this essay. In part it makes me proud to be a sex blogger - for keeping at it even when I'm not quite certain that I should.

[pandora]

Wow.. beautifully said.

[Alana]

Thanks for this. XXOO

A

[Fusion]

Well done. And keep writing CG!

[VJ]

We appreciate it all CG. The ljnk should take you to another kink, but this with commentary on open air etc.

[http://kinkyfarmwife.blogspot.com/2007/01/where-wild-things-are.html]

Found via Elle & Sex & the Ivy, who's having a bit of trouble with trolls. That via Viv212

Cheers, 'VJ'

[sweat shop sissy]

i think i should put a new (very short) section on my blogroll for 'blogger hero's'
cheers.

[tonyzee]

Cyberyokel that I am, I've only just recently come upon your work here. I can't believe how consistently good you are.

[S.P.]

CG for President... or at least Secretary of State... You are so grandly intelligent and insightful, with eloquence to boot...

Discovering your writing (thanks, Sue B!) spurred the Ms. and I to create our own little unpublicized parallel webspace last year, and while the entries have "dribbled," I/we have arrived at the conclusion that it has been a valuable part of our continuing relationship. At a minimum, it allows us the freedom to express those innermost thoughts and opinions that might not otherwise be communicated between us, and thus, we know even more of what the other is thinking to our mutual benefit. You might be having a similar unanticiated effect on you and Donny...

We have also gotten occasional appreciative comments from our sexually-related friends/readers telling us how our writing (and yours) has inspired their adventures and personal time together, without the advent of trolls. So we consider ourselves lucky, all around.

So wherever PDT goes (or cums), we and our friends thank you, applaud you, and support you vicariously.

[KtotheE]

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been fucking my lover and simultaneously narrating in my head our sex.

I don't know that you're just talking about sex blogs there (well, other than the word sex in that sentence).

I think you're talking about blogging in general.

Almost every day I do something with the thought that it'll make a great blog entry, and often in the middle of some experience - like scuba diving - I'll think I wish I had a picture of this I could post on my blog

When one's life fuels one's art, the two begin to blur together.

[t'Sade]

Its hard to keep up with things. Even normal blogs seem to spike for a few months, then drift off. I know that in my in-character journal, I hit the wall at the year point, still trying to get over that one. But, I have to say your wit and skills would bring me back even if you never wrote another word about sex. :)

But, your fucking honesty about fucking is one of those things that keeps dragging me back.

[ajooja]

I was worried where this post was headed, but I'm very proud of you. You're the best.

[chelsea girl]

I'm glad to hear that I struck a chord in so many of you, but I suspect that this feeling of blurred life and art (like an aesthetic real life smoothie, now with spirulina!) is endemic to any writing--and perhaps any art, though I don't feel qualified to speak to all the lively, much less the deadly, arts. You write/you live/you write.

Thanks everyone.

kissykiss,
chelsea girl

[Edgy Mama]

Beatifully writ.

Those of us who have stuck with the bloggin for two years or longer have become the doyennes of this exploding virtual world. I'm not quite sure how I feel about now being a middle-aged blogger!

But I think we should keep writing!

[LoneRhino]

Are you a Virgo?

[chelsea girl]

LR,

Not the last time I checked. Thanks for inquiring.

kissykiss,
chelsea girl

[badinfluencegirl]

"I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been fucking my lover and simultaneously narrating in my head our sex. It’s a weird fucking sensation, this double consciousness of doing and narrating, and it gets in the way of really enjoying the fucking."

you know i started my sex blog last september because i have a history of losing my sex drive in long term relationships AND i just wasn't getting any and the sex blogs i had recently started reading had really helped me to find some of my lost drive.

and i learned that writing sex and my fantasies turns me on, exposes my hidden secrets and judgemental feelings and really gets me examining the whys of my heretofore unexplored sexuality.

and that was great and now i'm sort of going 'um i've written a huge number of my fantasies down now and i want to talk about their effect on me instead of the sex itself' but at the same time i've developed a readership who likes my smut.

not to mention that i've taken a lover and now find myself doing exactly that. when i masturbate or fantasize or fuck i'm narrating it at the same time...

the nice thing for me is that i have a two year old 'regular' blog so i know that change and a slowing down is natural and that if you just surf the way you really feel about your blog and post when you can? it stays.

the harder part is to stay honest once you know your mother reads your blog. (regular, not smut... but it's an apt comparison nonetheless)

at the end of the day though you're entirely right. it's worth it for sure.

[ArtfulDodger]

This was well and truly said CG. I've learned a tremendous amount since I started writing over a year ago and I agree, however (and you did touch on this in a comment above) I can tell you that this duality is not limited to the "sex blog". In fact this split occurs in all truly creative outpourings, if you really feel it, you really are it and it becomes you. In my opinion that is why so few of these adult blogs last beyond six months, because they serve purpose and not art. The desire to write comes from many sources and all of them are valid, but only the desire to create long-burns the candle. And that is no slight to anyone, we all have our reasons, our desires and our passions. But I feel it often and lately have taken to writing about other things in my life, my thoughts, and experiences, to take a brief break from the sexual, if only to clear the mind.

keep on truckin beautiful.

[Ms Naughty]

Great piece Chelsea.
If only I could have quoted this for my feature article! I recently found myself musing about why I *don't* blog about my sex life and your post has reinforced my thoughts. Sex blogging is a brave business and I admire anyone who can pull it off... so to speak.

[Dirty Debbie]

I enjoyed reading your insights. I agree with everything you said. You've helped me look into my sex blog, the issues, and my readers.
I wouldn't change a thing.
Thanks again...