Re-Imagining Feminine Desire: A New Face for Myth and Fairytales

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Adrea Kore, Anthology Release, Desire, Erotic Fairytales, erotic poetry, Fairytale Re-Tellings, Female Sexuality, Feminine Rites of Passage, Greek Mythology, Lustily Ever After, Myth Re-tellings, Persephone, Published Poetry

What is it about fairy tales and myths that can speak so powerfully to us, despite the distance between when they were written and where we are now, as a contemporary audience? According to writer Sanjida O’ Connell, recent research indicates that “fairy tales are ancient, at least one dates back to the Bronze Age, whilst others, such as Beauty and the Beast and Rumplestiltskin, are over 4,000 years old.”

Narrative is part of the human psyche, the way we explain the world to ourselves and each other.

How is it that a fairytale we loved as a child can still resonate strongly for us as an adult? One of those reasons is that fairy tales and myths are dense with symbols and archetypes, elements which hold a multiplicity of meanings, depending on who is doing the looking, and from what angle.

How a story is told depends on who is doing the telling.

This may also be why a writer intent on creating more relevant meanings for a contemporary female audience, may find the narrative and archetypal characters of many myths and fairy tales pliable to re-interpretation and re-attribution of meanings. We are not so far removed, it seems, from understanding Rapunzel’s isolation, or  Athena’s drive for perfection. Sanjida O’Connell expresses this beautifully:

“Narrative is part of the human psyche, the way we explain the world to ourselves and each other.”

Or as surrealist Elizabeth Lenk described this sense of timelessness in myth and fairytale, “the walls between time periods are extremely close to one another.” I like this idea; that as women writers, we might put our ear to a metaphorical wall and hear the story of Bluebeard’s wife or Persephone as if it is going on in the next room, as if it is close to us.

Although I adored and devoured fairy tales as a child, it’s hard not to look at them now through feminist eyes. As O’Connell asserts, though the tales “may begin in such a cosy way, make no mistake – fairy stories are dark tales of misogyny, social climbing, child abuse and infanticide.” Myths and fairy tales tend to ascribe very traditional, polarized roles to women. They are often either the “good” woman:

• wife
• mother
• virgin
• daughter

Or the bad, trouble-making woman:

•  outcast / beggar / nagging wife
•  witch
• temptress.

Additionally, the play and power of female sexuality is often submerged or sidelined, hidden behind the desires and needs of male characters in patriarchal worlds. One of my favourite collections of re-imagined fairy tales is Angela Carter’s  “The Bloody Chamber”, in part because she found ways to make the themes of  female sexuality more explicit and central to the narrative than in the originals, and wrote them in a way that questioned the roles of women in patriarchal societies and the limited choices they had, often creating new paths of action for her female characters.

From an introductory essay to a volume of science-fiction and fantasy stories written by women (She’s Fantastical, 1995), writer Ursula Le Guin observes:

“In the last thirty years or so, as women have taken to writing as women, not as honorary or artificial men, it’s become clear that they see a rather different world, and describe it by rather different means. The most startling difference is that men aren’t at the centre of it …”

Women Writing The Erotic | Emmanuelle de Maupassant

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Adrea Kore, Emmanuelle De Maupassant, Erotic Authors, Inspiration, On Writing, women writing sex

My dear friend and talented writing colleague, Emmanuelle de Maupassant, embarked upon a massive project earlier this year – a qualitative and quantitative survey of 130 authors writing and publishing within the erotic fiction genre.

Her data became the basis for a fascinating, in-depth series of articles detailing erotic fiction’s many facets, and providing insight into the collective minds behind the genre. The article series spotlights a broad range of topics: from authorial intents and motivations to public perceptions and the function of pseudonyms; literary inspirations, censorship, issues of craft and the current state of publishing and marketing erotica.

Some articles also looked at the genre from a gendered perspective; what it is to write as a man or woman within erotic fiction, and mapped possible differences of perspective and experience. You can read about the male perspective here.

Image Courtesy of Emmanuelle de Maupassant

I feel honoured to have been part of this survey, along with a number of my writing friends, colleagues, and personal inspirations within the genre. The collection of articles provide an insightful “panoramic view”. Where is the genre right now, in 2016, several years into its boom, and five years on from the publication of Fifty Shades of Grey? Regardless of one’s opinion of this book, it has certainly bought more visibility to the genre, and agruably, more publishing opportunities. Where does erotica appear to be heading?

 

In the incisive words of Remittance Girl:

“As we look to what comes next, our only true desire can be to write freely and honestly, to write what refuses to lie quietly, to write what thrills us, emotionally, intellectually and viscerally.”

I see writing erotica as a woman to be a political act, as well as a creative one, and was particularly inspired and intrigued by Emmanuelle’s three-part series on “Women Writing the Erotic”. With Emmanuelle’s kind permission, I’m re-blogging Part One here, as it delves into so many pertinent aspects, and represents an intelligent, thoughtful “round-table” of ideas and observations from many of my favourite female authors. I only wish we could all have sat down to dinner together, and had this conversation!

Links to Part Two and Three are at the bottom of the original article, and further down you’ll fnd links to all the other fascinating articles that are part of this series.

It’s over to Emmanuelle now … Read on!

In this series (within the 130 authors survey), I’ll be sharing women’s views on exploring sexuality through fiction. Which themes tug to be unravelled and explored? What motivates us, challenges u…

Source: Women Writing The Erotic | Emmanuelle de Maupassant

“For the Men”: Staging Stories of Male Desire

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Adrea Kore, Anthology Release, Dominance / submission, erotic dancing, erotic fiction, Exhibitionism, Female Sexuality, For the Men Anthology, Male Sexuality, Published Fiction, Seduction, sexual fantasies, Voyeurism

I write a lot about female desire. So imagine my delight (and surprise) at hearing that my story “Dance For Me” had been accepted for inclusion in sassy Rose Caraway’s latest project and anthology: For the Men: And the Women Who Love Them.

Featuring twenty-five stories from twenty-five authors, editor Rose Caraway’s vision for the anthology was to curate “a space for men to partake in the erotic” and to “eliminate assumptions, obliterate out-dated generalizations” about masculinity and male sexuality.

As the title emphasizes, it’s a space that overtly welcomes men, but where men and women readers are of course, both welcome. Here, I very much agree with Rose, in the anthology’s introduction, when she declares ‘the gained strength that comes from our intersecting sexual paths can create a level of intimacy that is more fruitful than you can imagine.”

I believe that is the place where my story “Dance for Me” sits. On its simplest level, it’s a narrative of seduction. It’s also an exploration of how having the courage to own one’s sexuality and explore it through “mutually intersecting” sexual fantasy can deepen intimacy.

Like a courtesan from another era, I must dance for the pleasure of my Dom. Dance for his pleasure and his favour.

I’ve always been interested in the inherent theatricality in sexuality. Dressing up, creating scenes, becoming the one who watches or is watched … Showing parts of our inner secret selves that don’t always get to come out in our everyday lives. So many possibilities in the staging of desire.

I’m standing in this cage. In the centre of a fetish club dance floor. In a leopard-skin corselet. It could look like I planned this, but I didn’t. It’s my first time here, my first play session with this dark-suited Dom, after several intense online interactions. The decisive click of his handcuffs securing the cage door. Ensnaring me in his scene of submission. Arms folded, smiling at my indignation.

“Dance for me.”

I look around at the club full of diversely dressed and undressed people. Bodies poured into and spilling out of latex, leather and fishnets. Unexpected revelations of flesh, piercings and tattoos. Some have stopped their conversations or caresses, or are looking over their drinks, surveying my predicament with interest.

“Please me, and I shall ensure your … release … in more ways than one.”

Cheeks flushed hot with embarrassment, I try to focus on the music, washing over me in waves. Try to focus on his beguiling promise of release. The effect this has on my body. This slow burn, beginning already in my clitoris.

“Disappoint me, and I might make you spend the evening in there.” He kisses my hand, wound around the elegantly-crafted iron bars, and closer to me, whispers: “But I doubt you’ll disappoint.” He steps back, swirls his scotch, withdraws to a velvet couch at the dance floor’s edge. Best seat in the house, I think.

Which brings me to my love of dancing. Perhaps obsession would be the more truthful word. For me, a dance-floor is the place where I can fuse my passion for music with my body’s hunger for rhythm, sensation, sweat and expressive movement. Athletes love to hone and push their body through activities like running, swimming, weight training. I love to do this through dancing. I love how eventually my mind switches off. I become headless, nothing but breath and sensations. I’ll dance alone, while I’m cooking or doing housework. But when someone is watching me, I cannot deny there is an extra charge.When that someone is someone I’m attracted to, the charge soars.

If I could find a way to dance while I write, I would. So, the next best thing was to challenge myself to write an erotic story around the idea of dancing for someone as an act of seduction; translating such a deeply physical act into words and imagery.

Just breathe in the music.

Yellow glow of the spotlight turns my skin into warm pelt. I’m a restless cat in a cage. Tossing my mane of tawny hair, the sensual layers of rhythms are fusing with my limbs, my hips. My dance becomes part of the music. Sure now of my movements, I throw myself lightly from side to side of the cage, writhing down and up, sometimes facing my Dom, mock-imploring him for my release. Sometimes I show him my back, the curves of my ass emphasised by black suspenders; teasing him with a coquettish glance over one shoulder.

I’m in the cage, but he’s the one ensnared.

Dancing can be such an art of erotic and sexual expression – for oneself but also for others.

For me, a dance-floor is the place where I can fuse my passion for music with my body’s hunger for rhythm, sensation, sweat and expressive movement.

Trained in acting and dance from a young age, I was entranced by the magic of being on-stage performing for an audience. I guess it’s no surprise that I saw (and revelled in) the theatre in sex as I grew older and gained sexual experience. I was drawn to exploring the theatrical elements of sex long before I knew there was such a thing as BDSM or kink.

Even now, I shy away from identifying myself in conventional BDSM categories – I am not a sub or a Dom or even a switch. I have elements of all of these within me, and I do enjoy exploring power exchange in sexual play – both on and off the page. That power exchange, happens for me as I access different archetypes within, and I interact with whatever is coming up in those I am intimate with.

Lovers of kink are welcome to see and enjoy the kink elements in my story – they are certainly present. But I try, always, to write inclusively, so that readers of all predilections will find something to draw  them into the story, something they will relate to.

I was drawn to exploring the theatrical elements of sex long before I knew there was such a thing as BDSM or kink.

By now, curious reader, you may have guessed that some of this story is autobiographical; and some of it is fiction. The “true” part is I got to be “the girl in the cage” that night; I got to access my Middle-Eastern temple dancer, my Salome, my dancing whore, my “courtesan from another era”. I feel all these parts of me when I dance, and it was a total and utter liberation to let them all out,  in the service of pleasing the man I was there with.

He was certainly that. And to focus for a moment on him, he said he’d never had a woman dance like that for him before, and the line in the story after the dance is, word for word, what he said to me.

As the lovely Rose observes “erotic fiction has the capacity to liberate our minds and bodies … fantasy can be that powerful.” So, if you’re a man reading this who’s never indulged in a book of erotica – just for you – maybe now is the moment. And if you’re a woman who wants to inspire that man in your life to dive a little deeper into his sexual depths, imagine the look on his face if you gave him this.

You can read more on my thoughts behind “Dance For Me” – and male desire – as I chat to Rose over on Stupid Fish Productions . There’s also a saucy excerpt to whet your appetite. Head over there in the coming weeks to find out more of the fabulous authors  and stories featured, and as listed in the pic below.  But I understand if you can’t wait – and you want it all now. So – here’s where to get it.

Amazon

Smashwords

I-Tunes

Reviews are now popping up, come read what fellow erotica writer Malin James  has to say  – here …

Also, the book will soon be available on Audible, narrated by Rose Caraway, engineered by Big Daddy Dayv Caraway.

Table of Contents

A big congratulations to Rose, Dayv, and all the authors from all over the world who have contributed to opening up this erotic space … For the Men.

Fellow Author Brantwjin Serrah: On the Value of Poetry

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Adrea Kore, erotic language, erotic poetry, Inspiration, reviews, threshold, Writing Process

Fellow author Brantwjin Serrah is passionate about the value of deepening the understanding and appreciation of poetry: for itself, but also for how it informs prose-writing. Recently, she wrote an insightful article on this topic, featuring fragments of two of my poems, among others. In the article, she declares that:

 …learning to read poetry is equally as important to learning to write it.

Upon reading it, I felt it made such an intelligent argument for the value of poetry, that with her permission, I’m re-printing excerpts of it here. I’ve written poetry from a very early age, winning first prizes for poems when I was 11, then 12, as well as studying it intensively through drama and theatre training. Writing poetry is something I can’t seem to help, so I have felt it was important in the past to gain some study of the actual craft.

Personally,  I’m drawn to the form primarily because of these two elements: its many plays and permutations of rhythm, and its insistence on finding new, and evocative ways to express things felt and observed. You see, I’ve always loved dancing and disliked cliches.

After writing Talking Shop: Poetry as a Tool for Better Writing, Brantwjin also felt sufficiently interested in my erotic poem Threshold to feature an “unpacking” of the poem in her “Reading Diary”. This is the first time anyone has analysed one of my poems (that I’m aware of), so it was a slightly nerve-wracking experience, waiting to hear what she saw in my poem! However, reading the analysis was intriguing, and I’m relieved to see that much of what I wished to convey is apparent to the reader (this reader at least). I’m also delighted to hear that some elements are more open to interpretation than I had initially thought. (More than two players in the erotic encounter, really? Wonderful!) In this way, the poem can mean different things to different readers; they can insert themselves and their own narratives of desire into the poem. I believe this is one of the aims any well-crafted writing can hope to achieve.

So, please read on to hear more of Brantwjin’s keen observations on the craft of poetry, and the benefits of reading and writing it:

Interview: Oral Pleasures on the Page – with Editor Jillian Boyd

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Adrea Kore, Anthology Release, cunnilingus, Female Sexuality, femme fatales, Interview, Licked Anthology, Oral Sex, sex as addiction, Squirting, Taboo, Wet Satin Plaything

 

Soon after the release of erotic anthology Licked, I chatted to the anthology’s editor Jillian Boyd. She asked me to talk about my story Wet Satin Plaything: one of seven stories featured in the anthology and my thoughts on the rather slippery subject of the anthology’s theme: oral sex.

Jillian: What would you say your story is about?

Adrea: My story Wet Satin Plaything started off as several scenes of hot oral sex and intense, somewhat kinky sex, where a generally non-dominant woman is driven to a point where she finds her Inner Dominatrix.  It centred around a man and woman in relationship, the man is very into the act of cunnilingus, and gets off on all things associated with it – a woman’s sexual scent, lingerie, wetness, squirting. Seeing how many times he can get his lover to orgasm and assisting her to go deeply into that altered space of sexual pleasure.

…as I wrote those scenes, I realised something darker and more complex was trying to come out – an actual story where I wanted to explore the dynamics of something like addiction

But as I wrote those scenes, I realised something darker and more complex was trying to come out – an actual story where I wanted to explore the dynamics of something like addiction – addiction to sex with a certain lover. It’s not addiction in the textbook sense of the term, but it gets close. It clouds her judgement about the behaviour of the man and the healthiness of the relationship. It starts to change her behaviour and feelings about herself. Classic sex addiction is something only a small proportion of people experience, but a sexually compelling, yet emotionally dysfunctional relationship that we get caught in, and find really hard to disentangle ourselves from? I think many of us have been there.

She succumbs to it just like a need for a hit, and it feels impossible to leave the source of the hit, even though she questions his love and knows his behaviour is emotionally abusive. As time goes on, the high from the sex becomes more short-lived, and other problems start to crowd in on her. Just like a substance addiction. She realises she has to do something drastic to break the cycle, to free herself. And although the story is told from her perspective, it seems like he may have a kind of addiction too – to cunt, to being in control, to being needed sexually. I’m never quite inside his head – so these things are all possibilities!

J: What made you want to write a story for Licked?

A: It was one of those convenient synchronicities – I was drafting this story, and saw the submission call for stories that centred around the theme of oral sex. It made me realise a lot of my stories do feature oral sex scenes. Having the deadline definitely helped motivate me to get the story written, so I thank you for that.

J: My pleasure. What was the inspiration behind your story?

Apart from the theme of sex addiction, I wanted to explore how a woman might extricate herself from an emotionally abusive relationship; how she reclaims her power. And initially, I just kept seeing a scene in my head where a very assertive, somewhat controlling man, only lightly restrained, is psychologically subdued by a woman who knows him well enough sexually to appeal entirely to his particular ‘kinks’. She manages to subdue him so effectively that he doesn’t see what’s coming until he’s in a situation entirely unfamiliar and quite terrifying, with a woman he’s (supposedly) very familiar with.

I’ve always been fascinated by femme-fatale archetypes like Lady MacBeth.

I’ve always been fascinated by femme-fatale archetypes like Lady MacBeth.

“Unsex me here” Part of Study of Lady MacBeth by Gustave Moreau

Back when I was acting and directing in independent theatre, I created an entire theatre piece around the theme. Does every woman have this archetype inside them? I’m not sure, but I am sure if you are wounded by the masculine in some way early in your sexual development, a woman is more likely to have this aspect somewhere inside her. So, what kind of situation might bring it out? Well, here’s one in Wet Satin Plaything.

J: Well, as I told you when I accepted the story for the anthology, the opening sentence packs a fucking great punch that draws you in.

A: Thanks. Yes, that line came quite quickly – as soon as I knew I wanted to turn my scene in to a story.

J: When did you first become aware of oral sex being a thing people did?

A: Early – maybe too early! I think I would have been five or six when I first encountered a description of a guy getting a blow job. I was one of those precociously bright children with a very high reading age. I was voraciously reading everything I could, and I had a habit of randomly taking books from the top shelf of the family bookshelf and reading from them – whenever my Mum wasn’t around.

In this case it was one of those steamy paperbacks popular in the seventies – set in Hollywood, and about a male porn star called Toby – I even recall his name. Put it this way – a child is sexual from an early age. I felt guilty as hell, but I scoured those pages looking for the “rude” scenes – and let me tell you, I was well rewarded in that book! I remember being both fascinated and kind of horrified. I knew what a penis was, but it was for peeing, so the fact that women were described putting one (well, several) in their mouths was pretty shocking for me.

I don’t think I realised that such an act existed in regards to women until much later – maybe when I was 13 or 14. Depictions of it, even in illicit media I might have stumbled upon, wasn’t as common as that of fellatio back then – and my Mum, surprisingly enough, didn’t include it in her “how babies are made” talk when I was around eight.

Pheromones and sexual instinct, the archaic programming in our limbic brain to want to get close, and closer, to push ourselves up against and into someone we are attracted to when we smell the scent of their arousal, their sexual juices. It can over-ride our more refined taste-buds. We salivate over what isn’t clearly sweet or salty or bitter, but a little of everything.

J: What’s the best oral sex scene you’ve ever read / seen (in any form of prose or film, not just erotica or pornography)?

A: From memory, I think the French cinema classic Betty Blue (the Director’s cut) has at least one hot, intense scene where Beatrice Dalle’s character Betty is being treated to some incredible cunnilingus by her lover Zorg. What I love about this film is how apparent it is that Betty adores sex, without any shame, and gives herself to it with utter abandon. Diary of a Nymphomaniac, a Spanish film is up there too. And so many of the stories from Nin’s Delta of Venus depict oral sex, in all its variations and hues so evocatively.

Hand of A Stranger – by Adrea Kore (Audio-Erotica)

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Adrea Kore, Audio-Erotica, erotic fiction, Flash Fiction, Hand of A Stranger, sexual fantasies

Let the shimmer of my stockings under streetlights be your lure. I hear and don’t hear your stealth-clad footsteps, trailing me.

Block after block, past sordid bars and shut-eyed houses. I want not to know the dark lust you harbour at the glimpse of suspenders through my skirt-slit. Swishing so close to my sex, where you want your cock to be.

(If you exist, back there in the shadows.)

Hand of A Stranger is a dark little flash fiction story I often perform live. (For the audio-link, head to the bottom of this article, and the big red writing will tell you how) I’ve been told this piece is quite filmic, and I like to invite the audience to close their eyes when I read it – so the images and story can unspool across the screen of their collective closed eyelids. If anyone was peeking, I guess they would see how much I enjoy reading this one, savouring the sound and consequences of each word, each building image.

You could say this story was inspired by two things – my love of film noire  and my own relationship to what often is termed non-consensual (or non-con) sexual fantasies.

I have them. In fact, according to statistics, a lot of women do.

It may well have been the theme of some of my earliest and most recurring sexual fantasies when I was a much more sexually shy and inexperienced teenager.

I have written elsewhere that, “in engaging the reader, erotica seeks to arouse. But it may also confront. Provoke. And subvert. ” (Earthing Eros: The Making of Erotica)

And this:

Erotica writes into those areas of the human sexual psyche and behaviour that some other genres gloss over or shy away from. Erotica reveals the links between our inner psychological desires, motivations and our sexual actions. It can also bring into the light the contradictions between our inner sexual desires and our outward behaviour. What do we settle for? What do we secretly long for, and to attain that, what lengths would we go to?

The taboo in erotica is something I’ve addressed only obliquely so far, and it’s definitely a subject I will be focusing on in future blogs.

But – there’s other things going on here, aside from that.

This is a fantasy about a particular performance of femininity.

Stockings & suspenders. High heels & tight pencil skirts. Naivety. Vulnerability.

This is a fantasy about desirability, through the themes of pursuit and capture.

A deserted alleyway leers to the left.

You step close, bring your hand to my mouth, reel me into you, into the alleyway, deftly, like winding in a fish.

It’s an age-old, universal theme.  Found in medieval sonnets, classic romances, Shakespeare plays, and graphic comics. It plays out the idea that a woman is so desirable, that a particular man will pursue her and, at all costs, possess her.

This is a fantasy about loss of control.

But not really. it’s a sleight-of-hand concept, a paradox. When a woman constructs a fantasy for herself about loss of control, it’s her fantasy. She only loses control in the ways she finds pleasurable, and the other players in the fantasy behave exactly as she wants them to behave. So, on another level, she’s entirely in control. But to enjoy this kind of fantasy, one employs a kind of double-think. One forgets that one has constructed something in order to succumb to the will and desire of another. And the sexual imagination is adept at this kind of double-think, I believe,

This piece does contain explicit sexual themes and ideas that some may find disturbing and confronting. So please, make your choices around listening or not listening with a view to your own self-care. Thankyou – you have been cautioned.

TO SAY “YES” TO ME WHISPERING THIS STORY IN YOUR EAR – HOVER & CLICK OVER THE IMAGE BELOW …

It will take you to a site called Audio-Boom, and then, like a You-Tube Video, you’ll need to activate “play” to listen. I hope you enjoy … and you know I love feedback. ❤

Finally, this is also a fantasy about trust.

“My unspoken fantasy. Hidden in the crevices of my unconscious. But somehow, you have found me out.

All quotes from Hand of A Stranger – Adrea Kore 2013

(published on forthegirls.com 2013) 

Reflections in a Pixelated Pool

Tags

Adrea Kore, authenticity in writing, erotic fiction, erotic poetry, erotica, Greek Mythology, On Writing, Wet Satin Plaything

A few days ago, Kore Desires turned one.

Before I began this blog, I knew virtually (pardon the pun) nothing about blogging.  I rarely read blogs, had no clue about to set one up myself, or even how to create the avatar needed to allow you to comment on other’s blogs. I had only written two rather epic, rambling guest posts (under my real name), which I may well cringe at if I read them now.

Reaching the first anniversary of my blog caused me to reflect on the challenges of this year, and think about what I might have achieved and learned.

One year on, and I’ve met and connected with many other wonderful writers online, and have found in the sex and erotica blogging world what proved to be both expensive and elusive in the realm of my old-school tendencies ie – seeking knowledge and literary inspiration primarily through books. In this new-to-me realm, I discovered what I had long been hungering for – contemporary thinking and writing on sexuality – both fiction and non-fiction. Intelligent, provocative, diverse, creative and relevant – these writers are also in some way my contemporaries and peers – my stories sit beside theirs in published anthologies. This writing keeps me thinking, engaged, wrestling with ideas. The ongoing conversations between blogs and forums keeps me tuned like a cello, listening for my own chords, my own music. The exchange hurries me to the page at times, and has given me a sense of belonging in a like-minded, yet diverse, community.

Thirty-two posts on and counting, (plus a few guest posts), I’ve learnt quite a bit about this hybrid twenty-first century communication form, the blog.  It’s my observation that the form of a blog lies somewhere in the overlap between a journalistic article, an essay, a journal entry and a good conversation.  Depending on your voice, what you want to say, and who you want to appeal to, one borrows the shape of one or more of these four forms in differing intensities.

At times, blogging strikes me as a strange paradox. It’s like being in a private, quiet room, whispering thoughts to oneself – yet it’s also a room you share publicly, with readers you may know, but many who you don’t. Right now, I write within the illusion of solitude, yet at the back of my mind are the expectant rustlings and sighs of a would-be audience.  A blog is not a journal.  Anyone who claims they are the same has not kept a private journal. The mind’s focus is entirely different.

Sometimes, I feel decadent having a room all of my own here. A room, a kingdom… A domain. (I just bought mine – adreakore.com is coming soon!) I grapple with the narcissistic connotations of a blog, along with the subtle but present pressure to create and maintain a consumable, desirable image. I’m deconstructing this image right now by typing that last sentence, these words right now. But, you see, I will reveal, but only what I choose to. I will also conceal, and you the reader will not know what I conceal. Absences are enigmatic in that way…

The title of this blog came to me because I was thinking about the myth of Narcissus, the beautiful but vain youth who falls for his own reflection in a pond; about how seductive it is to remain gazing at one’s own (self-created) reflection, albeit a pixelated likeness in the greater online pond.

pixel

ˈpɪks(ə)l,-sɛl/

noun

ELECTRONICS

noun: pixel; plural noun: pixels

1. a minute area of illumination on a display screen, one of many from which an image is composed.

   “the camera scans photographs and encodes the image into pixels”

Origin

ENGLISH

1960s: abbreviation of picture element .

This might be a somewhat macabre metaphor for a blog, but I do think it’s apt in its reminder that we be wary not to fall for our own online reflection, lest we waste away and forget our real-life selves, like Narcissus.

“Narcissus” – by Caravaggio

As I’ve written elsewhere, the first two-thirds of this year had been arid creatively. Much of that has been due to the emotional impact of a relationship ending, the ensuing grief and confusion, and then the energy it’s taken to slowly reassemble the pieces of myself. I have been flung against the jagged edges of my own emotional limits. I experienced deep love, then the severing of that love, in what turned out to be an impossible situation.  It didn’t break my heart – it lacerated it, and also shattered parts of my identity. For several months, it was difficult to feel anything except despondency, failure and pain. I have learnt much about the conflicting impulses of my open, curious mind, and my more fragile emotional needs, and that for me, respecting my emotional well-being is paramount. Someday perhaps I’ll have the courage to write openly about it.

Although I couldn’t bare to write fiction, my critical faculties, suspended for a time in limbo with my emotions, flared back to life.  Some days, I think my intellect may have saved me from the seemingly endless spiralling of my darker emotions. I took hold of ideas and in responding to them intellectually, pulled myself out of that limbo. I discovered I still cared about what I thought about sexuality, and our culture’s responses to that. And for that stretch towards vitality again, I particularly want to acknowledge the inquiring minds and intellectual passion of Remittance Girl, Emmanuelle deMaupassant and Malin James. Thankyou. ❤

So, after several painful endings, and my time in a kind of torpor, some things are finally shifting.

Through this dark time, paradoxically I discovered something I love doing which allows me to assist and work with other writers – structural / developmental editing. After so many years interpreting play-texts as a theatre director, I believe I’ve developed a skill for sensing the spine of a story, for assisting the author to bring out its themes and nuances, and for hearing a writer’s voice, and seeing what might be getting in the way of the full expression of that voice. I have my first client for a significant project, a deeply imaginative writer, with whom I’m delighted to be working. I hope to attract more of this kind of work in the future.

And if you’ve read some of my recent posts, you’ll know I recently broke my drought of creative writing with a flood of story – my longest piece yet – Wet Satin Plaything.  I wrote it for a Submission call for House of Erotica, and I’m excited to announce that it’s been accepted. It will appear, along with stories from six other authors in an antholology called Licked – release date to be confirmed soon. (If you’d like a little preview, go to the end of this article).

I’ve also just found out I’ve had several of my erotic poems accepted into Coming Together, the well-known erotica-for-charity anthology. Erotic poetry antholologies are released far less frequently than story antholologies, so consider adding it to your collection. Edited by the prolific Ashley R Lister, proceeds for Coming Together: In Verse will go to domestic animal rescue organization Hope for Paws. I’m very happy that my poems can assist animals in need.

With at least some parts of myself reclaimed, I have newfound determination for several drafted future projects. And now, when I look at my reflection, maybe, just maybe, it’s becoming clearer …

So … wish me Happy Birthday … and many more to come…

Wanna slip into a little Wet Satin? Right this way, please …

For a sneak preview of one of the poems to be featured in Coming Together in Verse, come with me …

If anyone is interested in my services as a structural / developmental editor, drop me a line here.

And here’s where you can connect with the creative minds of Remittance Girl, Emmanuelle deMaupassant and Malin James. 

Beyond the Terror of the Blank Page

Tags

Adrea Kore, authenticity in writing, Creative Process, erotic fiction

It is after midnight here, and I’ve been working on my latest story Wet Satin Plaything for seven hours straight today.

But I finished it.

I finished it by “patiently meting out words on a page” at times today, and also by writing in a fever-fits of inspiration, deep inside the feelings and sensations that were happening to my characters, actually aroused at times by what I was writing. Sometimes I kept writing by swapping to my notepad, and making plot notes in my scratchy southpaw handwriting – with little swirls as bullet points, when I seemed to have run out of sentences for what was happening.

Other times, I kept writing by not writing, and cooking instead. Knowing my mind was turning over the stones which the unwritten parts of the story lay hidden under while I chopped and stirred.

And I got the submission in (I hope, given time zone differences) just in time. We shall see. I’ve never shaved a story submission deadline that closely before. It was literally the stroke of midnight when I hit “send”.

So it seems, as I was exploring in On Not Writing, reasoning with my perfectionist about being strong enough to weather negative or unexpected reactions actually worked. In addition, I created a strong, provocative piece of fiction out of a dysfunctional past relationship with some pretty emotionally damaging aspects. I allowed myself to explore my feelings of anger about being emotionally controlled, and verbally abused, and that felt powerful. I got to step inside the skin of a femme fatale-type character who doesn’t fear the dramatic gesture to make a strong statement about her boundaries, and to reclaim her power.

This is a short post, but an important one, to honour my progress.

I did what I set out to do. I didn’t give up, or distract myself (too much) telling myself my intention didn’t really “matter”. I followed the thread of the story, trusting in its strength, and I sought some support from writer-friends from the sidelines. Thanks to writer Jacqui Greaves for reading my draft-in-progress and providing feedback.

And I can now say, in comparison to when I last posted On Not Writing, when I confessed I hadn’t completed anything fictional for one whole year, that I’ve changed my own narrative.

There’s power in completions. Unfinished stories have a habit of haunting a writer, whereas completions are cleansing to the soul/soil, leaving room for new blossomings.

At twelve pages, and just over 6000 words, Wet Satin Plaything is now my longest narrative effort, more than three times longer than my last completed story Under My Cape. I’ve blasted through a block I had about only being able to sustain much shorter story narratives. I’d like to think that I am slowly developing my story-telling “muscle”, my stamina for sustained, longer narratives, and that, in time, a novel won’t be beyond my reach.  I know some writers believe they are “only” short story writers, “only” novelists. Me? I hope I’m a work-in-progress when it comes to word-counts.

In the first twelve hours or so (sticking with the twelve theme),  I’d also included as part of this blog a sizeable excerpt from my new story. That’s why there are a couple of comments by readers on the actual story. But I’ve now deleted this, because I’m not sure about the story’s fate, and I want to make sure I don’t contravene any potential future publishing agreements.

I will, however. publish a smaller excerpt here. Do you want to go there?

Meanwhile, we keep writing, don’t we? Those of us who, like Ray Bradbury, cannot stay too long away from words.

“You grow ravenous. You run fevers. You know exhilarations. You can’t sleep at night, because your beast-creature ideas want out and turn you in your bed. It is a grand way to live.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

On Not Writing

Tags

authenticity in writing, Creative Process, femme fatales, Inner Critic, On Writing, Perfectionism, sexual relating, women and anger, Writer's Block, Writing Process

This is a piece of writing about not writing. Every writer experiences this in their own uniquely terrifying way. If we peered into the psyche of every writer, we’d see this amorphous chimera of a creature;  the tangled roots of the writer’s particular creative wounds, childhood patternings, beliefs around creativity, purpose, and work attached to the underside of its ravenous belly, feeding it toxic information that is then passed onto the suffering writer. The litany of  intricate causes and contributing factors in what is commonly known as “writer’s block” is extensive and exhaustive.

Sometimes, all a writer can do is write about not writing.

The curse of perfectionism  is a close cousin to addiction. Combine that with an aberrant condition that I call ” fear of lack of an idea”, and what you get is a challenging psychological bind for someone who loves writing as much as I do.

As a younger creative, I  too experienced it as a BLOCK; a monolith of total and utter nothingness. I would desparately want to write fiction, but my inner critic had strong opinions about the right  kind of ideas that constituted true creativity. Very often I would feel a kind of constriction, like someone had their hands around the very part of my mind where the ideas were attempting to flow out. Pen poised on the page, the sense of an imminent outpouring would be reduced to a laboured trickle of half-birthed sentences, scratched-out phrases and jeering blank space.

So I resorted to copious journal-writing. There, my inner critic couldn’t thwart me, and if I read back over them now, there are so many sections where my recurring themes and emerging style are apparent. For example, I have always written about the sexual experiences I was having at the time in my journals. And its connection to body image, relating, gender dynamics, and love.

As a younger writer/ theatre-maker, I chiselled patiently away at the block I seemed to have around taking my creative impulses seriously, and then cultivating sustained, loving attention to bring them into being. I had enough ‘successes” to challenge my Inner Critic. I doggedly did Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way”, the blocked artist’s rite of passage.

Yes. Every damn list and arduous Morning Pages session, every painfully self-absorbed excavating-your-childhood  AGAIN exercise.

I had to cure myself of my memories of being a precociously bright child, who could create clever, pretty things three times as fast as anyone else my age, winning adult approval with seemingly no real effort on my part. My creativity process up until middle adolescence was like lighting a fire. It started with the spark of an idea, and with easily-found twigs and branches, very quickly flourished into a crackling, marshmallow-toasting fire.

Gather round. Look what I made.

Sometimes it even felt accidental. I did what I did, but I couldn’t really get the hang of how I was doing it before I was winning first prizes in short story and poetry competitions, and representing my primary school for an essay-wriitng competititon on some dull civic theme.

The problem was, I didn’t trust my own creative writing voice as a young adult, and I didn’t value or even see the subjects I wrote well about. I wanted a different kind of creative voice. I didn’t know what that sounded like exactly, but it alienated me from my own developing voice for many, many years. I also hid my creative writing in my theatre-work as an actor, director and publicist. I hid it in the writing of  short scripts, radio plays, monologues, programme notes, theatre press releases, theatre company manifestos, character exploration.

Now, most often, as a published fiction writer taking my writing seriously, there’s actually effort involved. (What?!) I can still fluke a 20-minute publishable flash fiction piece or a decent poem written over a coffee every now and then. But mostly, patience and effort are now involved. Experience has taught me over the last few years that when I tend to any of my ideas for a piece of creative writing, I generally get a creative outcome I’m satisfied with.

So, why, lately, have I regressed to an earlier phase of my creative development, and stopped trusting my ideas? Rather than taking them out for coffee, and listening to what they have to say, I’m circling them suspiciously, trying to glean information from them without getting too close, like an email one suspects might contain a destructive virus.

Why do I feel again the near-lethal grip of my perfectionistic persona around my ideas, throttling them as they attempt to express themselves on the page or the screen?

On Pleasures of the Text : Kore Reads

Tags

Adrea Kore, Adrienne Rich, Anais Nin, Creative Process, erotic fiction, Inspiration, My Bookshelf, On Reading, On Writing, Susan Sontag, women writing sex

Reading is a voluptuous, yet defiant act …

Reading is a voluptuous, yet defiant act, particularly in our increasingly  time-poor society.  Pages of a book can erect a little wall between yourself and everyday demands, whispering “later” to here-and-now concerns, and “yes” to deep time with the self. It’s a reason for lolling on your favourite couch with a pot of tea and home-made chocolate cake, or finding a mini-oasis of park green under the dappled shade of a tree.

I began this piece of writing with the intention of listing something like my ten most favourite works of erotica and stood, contemplating my bookshelf for inspiration. Yes, I have a real one, not a Virtual / Kindle one – to prove it there’s a photo further into the article.)

My bookshelf is an old-fashioned honeyed-wood thing of solidity that my father gave me one Christmas many years ago; five shelves high which means I have to stretch a little to reach the top shelf, and I like that feeling – of reaching for a treasured book. It makes me think of the feeling of yearning I get when I’m not reading; a yearning to sink in to the pages of a book and lose myself in story, and also the mental reach for the right word or image that one makes as a writer.

I keep my classics on the top shelf, just as a bartender will keep his top-notch spirits and liqueurs, gleaming and beckoning, on the uppermost shelf.  There, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment sits next to D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers. Bronte’s Jane Eyre leans, shivering a little, against Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. This shelf is bolstered by Shakespeare’s Collected Works at one end and a weighty volume of Oscar Wilde’s prolific and genre-spanning writing at the other.

 Language and ideas, once encountered, live inside you, and can effect changes, both subtle and catalytic.

Devouring and studying these classics in different ways during my childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, studying literature at University and hurling myself headlong into several semesters of Shakespeare and Ancient Greek Theatre (text and performance) through my theatre degree gave me a deep appreciation for the almost-limitless fecundity of language. As importantly, it also cultivated an absence of fear of language. Wrestling with Grecian choric text, conquering the vocal delivery of iambic pentameters in Shakespeare’s work, finding contemporary sense in obscure medieval words, and unravelling complex metaphors to reveal depth, beauty and universal truths in works conceived of many centuries ago; these interactions with language absolved me of any hesitancy I had in seeking out any author’s ideas I felt curious about, and opened me to the power and potency of the written word. The ideas we consume contribute to our growth or our atrophy. Language and ideas, once encountered, live inside you, and can effect changes, both subtle and catalytic.

Words endure. And the feelings they conjure up in the body can endure too, leaving traces, imprints in the cells, the memory.

You can tell a lot about a person by looking at the books on their bookshelf.

Can you keep a secret? This top shelf is now no longer my favourite shelf. These kinds of texts have had their way with me; they’ve done their work.  These … relationships I’ve had with texts such as these now underscore my new handful of literary touchstones. I’d like to introduce to you my new favourites – ones that have specifically  coaxed me along a path of writing. Initially, some of these works allowed me to notice my love for sensual, voluptuous prose and searing imagery, simultaneously realising what I most felt drawn to reading was the feminine experience of the world, and also those stories of  growth, transformation or dislocation, felt through and mediated by the body.

These were the things that I began to write about: Love and longing. Loss. Translating the physical arts I most loved into words: my experiences of dancing and life-modelling. Then, more arduously, carving out narratives of sexual trauma. Death. Then, the sensual pleasures. Sex.

Light, dark, light, dark. Always this dance, and writing has helped me embrace the totality in the supposed contradictions.

These are a few of my favourite things …

I realised it’s not been only my reading of erotica that has fuelled my desire to write erotica. As importantly, it’s been my reading of the following: non-fiction feminist texts and essays, strong, powerfully imaginative contemporary women fiction writers, play-texts written by female playwrights, and women’s short stories, in addition to a few core works of erotica read at crucial moments in my life journey. Then, throw in a few texts by male authors, and that would more aptly represent  those voices that resonate and refract in my own writing. Sontag again captures my thoughts on the relationship between what one reads and how one writes:

“Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by writing.”

I have said before that reading Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus gave me the spark to write about desire, and almost a decade later re-discovering Jeanette Winterson’s sensual, searing prose gave me the permission. Something about Winterson’s work resonated with the language burning away inside me, threatening a slow smouldering consumption of my journal pages if I didn’t give my ideas some more space and light. And more eyes and ears. Susan Sontag writes in an essay called Writing as Reading that our writing too, is part of our reading; that ” to write is to practice, with particular attentiveness, the art of reading.”

This portion of my shelf houses a seemingly arbitrary, but indelibly meaningful personal version of the Dewey decimal system. My obsession with creative process is revealed by my collection of books on the craft of writing and creative process. After all, “writing is finally, a series of permissions you give yourself to be expressive in certain ways” (Sontag).

Honourable mention goes to Ray Bradbury’s (one of my lifelong revered writers, so he had to get a mention in this article somehow)  Zen in the art of Writing and Writing as a Way of Healing by Louise DeSalvo. (Want to know how to go about writing difficult, personal experiences of trauma and loss so you can re-frame your experience and let words heal the wounds? This is the book)

Then there are my feminist theory texts such as Naomi Wolf’s Vagina.  There are more of those off-stage left, but I wanted a closer shot where you could also see some of the titles on the spine. There are two anthologies in which my own stories are published  (Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 13, A Story-telling of Ravens) nestled next to works that inspired me to start writing erotica. There’s an incredible feminist re-imagining of Medea’s story by German author Christa Wolf. Margaret Atwood’s chillingly feminist work of speculative fiction The Handmaid’s Tale.

Missing in action is Tobsha Learner’s witty and sensual Quiver,  also part of my chain of cause-and-effect of becoming an erotica writer.  I fear this one went the way of an ex, never to return, though her other anthology Tremble  is present. Also, I noticed with dismay I have no personally owned volumes of Angela Carter’s stories. That I shall have to remedy. There are more obscure erotic works such as Alina Reye’s Lucie’s Long Voyage and a comprehensive, gently academic and exhaustive collection of women’s writing called Erotica: An Anthology of Women’s Writing, edited by Margaret Reynolds. This one almost made it to my list, but it’s been more a reference book and an introduction to some of my favourite writer’s work, rather than one I’ve read cover to cover. This snapshot contains a good number of what I’d call my “Kore Reads”, but not quite all of them.

So here, in the order my subconscious tumbled them onto the page, is my bakers’ dozen (or my witches’ coven) of beloved  texts of erotic inspiration. Thirteen is a powerful number with a contentious and misunderstood history, so perhaps that’s appropriate for a tracing of the articulation of female desire. Over time, I’ll add descriptions or reviews.  If my writing resonates with you in any way as the reader, I hope you’ll feel intrigued to investigate a few of them. Or maybe some of these are your favourites.

• Delta of Venus – Anais Nin

• Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson

• Lighthouse Keeping – Jeanette Winterson

• The Last Magician – Janette Turner-Hospital

• Perfume –Patrick Suskind

• Medea – Christa Wolf

• On Lies, Secrets and Silences: Selected Prose 1966 – 1978 – Adrienne Rich

• Women who Run with the Wolves – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

• The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter

• Quiver – Tobsha Learner

• What I have Written – John A Scott

• Vinegar Tom – Caryl Churchill

• A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments – Roland Barthes
  

These are a few of my favourite things. These works and their themes, language, ideas, imagery now live inside me. These are the words that fire my own.

“Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading.  Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer. And long after you’ve become a writer, reading books others write – and rereading the beloved books of the past – constitutes an irresistible distraction from writing. Distraction.  Consolation.  Torment.  And yes, inspiration.”

~ Susan Sontag

*If you’d like references or more information about any of the books I’ve mentioned, dear reader, leave a Comment below or send me a personal message HERE.

Talk to me. I’m listening…