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Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
Hanne Blank is a Boston-based writer, editor, educator, and historian. The author of Big Big Love: A Sourcebook on Sex for People of Size and Those Who Love Them (Greenery Press, January 2000), she is the Editrix-in-chief of Zaftig! Sex for the Well Rounded, the associate editor of Scarlet Letters ©, A Journal of Femmerotica, and a sex columnist who writes regularly for the Boston Phoenix. Her fiction, articles, and essays have appeared in venues as diverse as Zenpride, Anything That Moves, the Sonoma County Independent, Paramour, and Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, as well as in anthologies, including Best Bisexual Erotica 2000, Best Women's Erotica 2000, Sex and Single Girls, and The Elvis Presley Reader. She is presently pursuing a doctorate at Brandeis University, where she has also served as an instructor. Having taught and lectured at a number of colleges and universities, she's fond of aggressively combining sex, music, writing, and academia with courses like "Music, Sex, and Culture," taught at Tufts University in 1997, and lectures like "L'hermaphrodite de la Voix" (Sex on the Edge Conference, Montreal, Quebec, 1998). Heather Corinna: People always make me answer this, so I'm going to inflict it upon you. How did you get started in this genre? Hanne Blank: I'm not really sure. I've always written erotic stuff for lovers of mine ever since I was about 17 or so. I used to be a hugely prolific letter-writer, which I'm not as much any more, probably because I have other outlets for writing, but I used to think nothing of writing a 20-page (typed) letter to someone with whom I was very close, a combination of diary, gazetteer, and various musings. Writing to and for lovers has always been a big part of my writing as a whole; even now, most of the stories I write I write at least in part with an audience of my lover(s) in mind. I'm not entirely sure when or how the writing shifted from being something I did in letters to being something where I was creating independent stories, but it did. HC: As both an editor and an author, what defines quality literary erotica for you? HB: Prose about sex and the interplay of erotic energies that is both sensitive and sensible. I mean sensitive in that it is both sensory, having a lot of appeal to the senses and sexually suggestive, as well as sensitive in that it acknowledges (even silently) that sex is a source of great vulnerability, anxiety, and fear. A piece can play on that vulnerability and anxiety and fear, that's fine. Playing on that knife's edge can be incredibly sexy. However, pieces that go out of their way to create those states or mock people for feeling them are no longer erotic in my eyes. The "sensible" part to me means many things, too, but mostly it means that the piece has to be believable in some way, and most important, it has to be emotionally believable. There has to be some sort of psychological verisimilitude happening, and that has nothing to do with whether I like the characters or identify with them – I still need to be able to know how and what they think and feel if I'm going to find what they're going through erotic. I want to be given a sense that even if I personally don't react in such-and-such a way to such-and-such stimulus, someone else does, and given some insight into how and why. HC: How difficult is it to both create quality erotica and find quality erotica for publishing? HB: It's not hard for me to create it. I seem to have a knack for it. It can be hard to find it, as a publisher/editor, but I suspect that's due in equal parts to the fact that people have such different likes and dislikes in erotic material, due to the fact that people have been trained to accept "needless to say..." Penthouse Forum-style crap as being how one is supposed to write about sex, and due simply to the fact that many people assume that having the ability to fuck well automatically gives one the ability to write well about fucking (hint: it doesn't). HC: What facets of a piece take priority, whether you are creating it or editing it, when you gauge the quality of the erotica? How important are originality, character development, natural language, sexual accuracy and believability, and plot? HB: I always say that I am on the side of Beauty and Truth. If there's no beauty in a piece, linguistically or narratively or in terms of its characters or description, I'm not interested. It's one of the reasons certain rather celebrated writers of erotic material just don't turn me on at all – I find it hard to get aroused (intellectually or libidinally) by something that doesn't intrigue me aesthetically. The rest is negotiable. A piece can have no character development at all, no plot, no setting to speak of, none of that, and be an excellent piece. I draw really serious lines in the sand on only two issues. One is accuracy. If an author decides to describe something and gets part of it fundamentally, flat-out wrong – a recent example that comes to mind is a short story I was sent that featured the male protagonist fucking his female partner's clitoris – then that's an automatic KO. That seems elementary, but sometimes it isn't. Even very experienced erotica writers sometimes get themselves in over their heads when in unfamiliar waters, and I've seen some embarrassing examples I won't cite out of collegiality. Suffice to say there are reasons I don't write about things I haven't done, unless I'm writing about things that are so obviously speculative or science-fiction/fantasy oriented that no one (including me) is going to know whether or not what I describe is accurate. The other thing I really draw a sharp line about is hatred and exploitation. This is not as easy to gauge as accuracy, but if I read a piece and it seems to me to be hateful or exploitive, I'm not going to publish it. I realize and acknowledge that hatred, and also the extremely sharp power dynamics of exploitation, can be very erotically charged. I'd be the last to say they didn't. But I don't find them, in general, to be arousing in any way I find pleasurable. HC: I agree with you, and I draw an editorial line there myself, however, wouldn't you say that in the more mainstream pornographic market, you see a lot of that? HB: I think a lot of people use it to disempower the images and ideas that arouse them, because they feel powerless in the face of their own desires and lusts. So if you can hate or exploit that which causes you to feel out of control, it gives you a way to control it back, and just as thoroughly and brutally as you feel you are controlled by it. The sad thing is that many people never learn that they do not have to feel controlled or overruled by desire. People don't learn (because our culture doesn't teach enough about sexual desire to teach this) that desire is really pretty neutral and benign if you just sit and let it be what it is. It is eminently possible to choose how to interact with your own desire – in ways that may or may not ever include interacting with the *object* of your desire. This goes hand in hand with the other major teaching people in this culture don't get about desire: desire impels, it does not compel. Of course, we're really good, in Western culture, with calling our impulses 'irresistible' and letting them compel us rather than animate our own choices to action. But let's face it, there's an enormous difference between being a human with a hard-on and being a bull elephant in rut...and to be honest, I think the difference is part of what makes sex so enjoyable for us humans, rather than the fairly mechanistic act it seems to be for many other animals who do it only when they are biologically compelled. Choosing to think of sexual desire as a force that compels (forces) action means that on some level, you're resigning yourself to living as a sexual compulsive. How horrid that is, and how limiting – and how unnecessary. HC: I know we have had writers whose work we have declined on that level write in and accuse us of "censoring" a very real, albeit negative, human emotion. HB: I've gone round and round with myself on this one, thinking about it in terms of censorship and muzzling, and the only conclusion to which I've come is that there's a big difference between my saying something shouldn't have been written or mustn't be published and my being unwilling to have something that offends me published with my name attached to it in some way. I've actually given some writers referrals to other editors whom I felt would be more receptive of work I found hateful or exploitive, if I thought the work was good in other ways, but I can't stomach the notion of bringing it out myself. I have to sleep at night. HC: Can you recall the first piece you read that set a quality example of erotic literature for you? HB: Oddly, there were two pieces that really set an example for me in terms of writing and what is important to me in writing about the body and sex. One was/is T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," with its horrible, desolate line "Do I dare to eat a peach?" – one of the most effective lines in English poetry, and one of the most physically arresting (albeit not pleasantly so) moments I've ever had in reading. The other, for something completely different, is Tom Robbins' "Another Roadside Attraction," and its joyous, goofy, detail-oriented approach to sex and arousal. Anyone who can describe a clitoris as a "ladyfinger cloud pump" gets my vote. HC: As an editor, both for Zaftig and Scarlet Letters, how many of the pieces you receive as submissions are accepted, and how much editing to you generally have to do? HB: It's changing. I used to accept more pieces, and more pieces that needed more editing, but that's changing because my standards are higher now – this has to do with my own maturity as well as the ongoing evolution and maturity of Scarlet and the other publications I do – and because I just don't have the kind of time I used to have to go through multiple rounds of editing and revision with writers. I'd say that I accept one out of every twenty or so submissions, on the whole. HC: As an author, how do you see the current market for literary erotica right now, and how does it compare, both in stringency of quality and in income, to the harder porn market? HB: There is no real market for literary erotica, in terms of making any real money off writing it. That's just the way it is. Even inclusion in one of the top-ranking anthologies, like Best American or Best Women's Erotica series, will get you about $100-$200 at best. While well-paying venues do pop up now and again, their existence is often pretty fleeting. No one is in any danger of making their entire living this way as an author, let's put it that way. That's one of the reasons that those of us who do this sort of writing usually have other writing and editing jobs – or just plain old day jobs. That said, there are a lot more venues now for literary erotica (and for traditional porn) than there used to be, largely thanks to the Web, so aspiring writers in the genre have many more opportunities to become published. The market for traditional porn stories is better funded but also fairly slim. Novels and novellas can be sold – there are a number of imprints, like Black Lace, that are quite good. But at the same time, the industry just lost one of its giants when Masquerade Books folded last year. I suspect it means that things aren't going to change any time soon, that smut books are still not earning enormous advances, that print publishers still function on a shoestring profit margin, and that there are enough people out there writing smut that most publishers don't have to pay much to get enough to fill up their lists, and that book publishers who concentrate on erotica and porn are going to continue to have a high risk of financial failure. As for porn markets, go to your favorite porn store and peruse the shelves. Lawrence Schimel and Cecilia Tan are supposed to be bringing out an Erotica Writers' Guide any time now. I expect that will be helpful when it finally hits the streets. HC: In terms of the difference in income between the literary erotica market and the porn market (translation: no money to moderate money), for the writer whose heart is in the literary, what do you see as the benefits of writing for a nonpaying market? HB: The biggest advantage is that no one tells you what to write! There's no 50% rule; there's no editor breathing down your neck with "...each 2000 word story must have at least two episodes of anal or vaginal sex, with emphasis on the size of the woman's breasts and buttocks..." sorts of specifications. Let me tell you, it's pretty damned boring to write smut to spec if they're not your specs, but that's often what you have to do to get paid to write smut at all. If you don't care about getting paid for it, you have much more freedom, both erotically and as a craftsperson. Honestly, if you're writing literary erotica, you're doing it because you love to write literary erotica. There's no other reason to bother. HC: Is writing for either market (porn or erotica) a stigma when it comes to getting published in non-adult venues? I know when I started writing, I got a lot of static for using sex in my pieces, especially if it wasn't gratuitous, or if it was in more serious pieces, and even more for simply being known as a sexuality author. HB: Definitely. The biggest assumption people will make is that you can't possibly know how to write anything else. I recommend that if you decide to write sexually explicit ANYTHING, fiction or nonfiction, and you want to be a working writer, you concentrate hard on building up a non-sexually explicit clips file for a while. You can sell yourself on the strength of your non-sexual clips until you are established enough that it is okay for people to also know that you write sexually explicit stuff. Otherwise, it is damned difficult to get people to entertain the notion that you are capable of doing anything else. HC: What changes have you seen in the general literary marketplace dealing with sex and erotica since you started working in the genre? HB: I think the big trend emerging is the formation of subgenres, both in the periodical/magazine market and in anthologies and books. There are so many topic-specific anthologies now – themes like "Sex on the Beach" or "Boys will be Girls" or "Lost Tales from PeeWee's Playhouse" or whatever – that it is now almost surprising to find a non-themed anthology. Even some of the "Best of" anthologies are now going themed. HC: Do you see the general fiction and nonfiction markets still keeping their distance, or embracing sex more...or less? How will the slow state of the current market affect us as sexuality authors, in your opinion? HB: I think each genre is different. Romance novels, for instance, have changed from the intense romance but discreet sex they used to have to having considerably more explicit sexual content, even if it's still mild and short by porn standards. But it's changed. On the other hand, the sort of "serious lit" crowd, the Granta/Kenyon Review/New Yorker sort of stuff, still shies away from sex most of the time unless it's done in this sort of deeply conflicted Woody Allen/Philip Roth way that reads like it was scraped off the underside of a psychiatrist's couch on Central Park West. At the same time, you're likely to find much more sexually explicit content in mainstream NYT Bestseller type novels – not that it's necessarily great writing about sex. I tend not to worry too much about what the market wants. I write what I write. Learn more about the literary erotica markets for writers. Tell us what you think. Email talkback@pifmagazine.com Heather Corinna is the founder, editor and publisher of Scarlet Letters: The Journal of Femmerotica and the teen sex education resources Pink Slip and Boyfriend!. Her work in sexuality and erotica has appeared in numerous venues, including Maxi, Orato, LeisureSuit.Net, Siren and CleanSheets. She has been applauded in the media at Playboy Online, AVN, the San Francisco Weekly, the Boston Phoenix, EstroClick, The Minneapolis City Pages, Hip Mama, and other publications. She was an honored speaker on freedom of speech and erotica with Marianna Beck for the Illinois Library Association last year, and her work can currently be seen in the print anthologies The Adventures of Food, Viscera, and the upcoming Aqua Erotica. |
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