Beginning about a year ago over at EroticMadScience.com I published a series of posts about creating erotic art called “on making your own“, in which I urged people to do just that. I now have a year’s more experience, having written and published an entire graphic novel (as well as a fair amount of additional bespoke art) and I have decided to revisit the subject for a more general audience here at ErosBlog. The first few posts will be about the good that making your own does for you and for others. And then I hope to follow up with a series of posts with more practical advice for those of you who want to make your own.

So why should you try to make your own erotic art? Fun, friends, and philanthropy.

This post is about fun, just by yourself.

We all have busy lives, I am sure. But try this exercise. Block off some time for yourself. Sit down with whatever means of writing you feel most comfortable with whether it’s pencil and paper or your computer or even your manual typewriter if that’s what helps set the mood for you.

Now think of something that really turned you on. Go on, there’s something there. If you’re like most people there are dozens or hundreds of things there, but just think about that one thing for now. Now try to write it down. Don’t worry about whether what you’re writing down is “good.” Don’t worry about whether it’s absurd. Or “immoral.” And don’t worry about what anyone will think. Not your partner, not your parents, not your children, not your friends. No one. For right now, this only about you. Don’t worry about whether what you’re writing will “last” — that’s not the point. Have a paper shredder or secure delete program right at hand if it will help you relax. Just let whatever it is unspool in your head like film running through a projector and try to describe in your own words what you are seeing and hearing, or feeling, tasting, or smelling if your mind runs that way.

There, you did it. And how do you feel?

I’ll tell you how I felt the first time I tried, which was rock-hard (I’m a dude, so that’s not an uncommon response) and aroused beyond all measure, as much or more so as I ever was during any act of either solo or partnered sex I ever had. (If you’re curious as to what strange fantasy pushed me to these heights, it was a variant on the scenario eventually illustrated here.) Your reaction might not be quite so extreme as mine, but I’m willing to be that there’s something there, and that you may well be on the brink of some rather serious enjoyment right now.

If you wish to retire to your chambers for a little while now, please be my guest. Pleasure is not so common in life that we can afford to just throw any of it away.

The point here is that the more you were able to let go and write, the more fun you doubtless had. And the more you practice doing it, the easier it will become. The act of writing will be an adventure of transformation and discovery as you find new ways of finding pleasure in your own imagination. As Susie Bright, who has more experience with this sort of thing than I’m ever likely to have, put it in How to Write a Dirty Story:

Writing sex scenes will make you excruciatingly aware of your own body. As you compose your work, you will search your memories to find the most sensitive and lasting observations. You’ll remember what you’ve seen and felt in the most acute way. The strength of your imagination is what makes the fiction come to life; and if you’re writing at your best, you’re going to internalize those stories — when you’re writing them, they feel real.

Now who wouldn’t want a piece of that? A few years ago I wrote here at ErosBlog about Robert Nozick’s famous “experience machine” thought experiment, expressing a bit of skepticism about Nozick’s firm conclusion that we would not want to plug into the amazing science-fictional machine that could give us any experience we wanted. Well, there’s some good news for those of you who might want to plug in to the experience machine for a least a little while. You don’t have to wait for superscientists to make one. You already have one within you. It’s just a matter of working your imagination sufficiently to access it.

And that, I hope everyone will agree, is a lot of fun.

But there’s far more fun to be had with friends than alone, and that will be the subject of my next post.

Similar Sex Blogging:

• On Making Your Own, #3: Hedonic Philanthropy
• On Making Your Own, #2: Friends