This is an archive page for my blog posts at “Oh Get A Grip”, a blog where I am one of six erotica writers who post each week on a given theme. There is a guest writer on Saturdays.
Slipping Over The Line – my last post
Mike Kimera is a name I hide behind. Mike Kimera pushes my imagination towards things that I will not admit to in public and which I do not incorporate in my own life. Mike Kimera is someone my wife doesn’t love.
The more time I spend as Mike Kimera, the less time I spend living my real life.
On the whole, I like Mike Kimera. That’s part of the problem. I’ve grown used to having him around, I’m proud of at least some of the stories that he’s written. I’m flattered and pleased that people read his stories and write to him.
It is the nature of taboo things to be attractive; if they held no attraction they wouldn’t need to be protected or forbidden.
I see now that, to be the person I want to be in my real life, to live with authenticity, I must stop mentally sneaking away to be someone else. I should spend that energy in my marriage.
Mike Kimera is a man who sounds like he always knows the answers. I am a man struggling to understand how I came to be where I am: unhappy with myself and unable fully to express the love that I feel for my wife.
I have decided that I will carry on writing, but not as Mike Kimera and not writing erotica. I will write stories I can share with my wife and show to my friends. I will still try to write the truth. I will still listen to hear what the truth tells me about myself.
Not Many People Know That
Michael Caine convinced me that, combined with enough dry wit and self-effacing charm, trivia could be cool. Mind you, he also looked good in those horn-rimmed NHS specs that were the bane of my early teens.
I acquire trivia the way a white shirt acquires coffee stains; there’s no plan involved, I’m just certain that it’s going to happen.
Things only became seriously uncool when I fell prey to addiction. At this point I should shuffle to my feet, hang my head, wring my hands and murmur: “My name is Mike and I’m addicted to etymology.”
Writing Blind
They say that the first bite is with the eye, but it’s not the bite that you remember, it’s just the one that lures you in, the tease but not the taste.My stories rarely start with what my eyes tell me. I write with my ears instead, most often starting with a voice, not a face. My characters speak to me and I write down what they say.
Promoting The Digital Me
I’m an amateur writer. I’m fortunate enough to be able to make my living doing something else so I’ve taken the view that I don’t need to be paid for what I write. The self that I promote – Mike Kimera – is an internet construct. He only exists as the guy who writes erotic stories and contributes to blogs. It’s logical then, that his existence is promoted primarily through the internet.
Writing For Happiness
I started to write out of loneliness more than anything else. I turned inwards, not pursuing happiness, just inuring myself from life. To my surprise, I discovered happiness. When I write, time slows, the world fades and there is nothing but me and my imagination. It is, in its way, a little bubble of happiness.
To Boldly Cliché
So, I started to write this devastatingly clever analyse of the function of cliché in the collective subconscious and its role in dreamweaving in Neuro Linguistic Programming and died of boredom part way through. I decided the only way to rescue the post was to fall back on that old cliché ‘show – don’t tell’. This little tongue-in-cheek fantasy was the result.
Rock Magic
Meatloaf performed Rock magic that night. He pulled in the energy from all our nameless yearnings, amplified it and sent it crashing back over us in a tsunami of sound that transformed us into a single organism moving to a beat stronger and more urgent than our own hearts.
Turning ‘Once Upon A Time’ into ‘Every Time Unuil One Of Us Dies’
Romance isn’t about real life, it’s about the everyday magic that love can work, it’s about the world as we would like it to be, it’s about our dreams coming true. The purpose of Romance is to transcend real life – that is why it needs to have that “Happy Ever After” ending.
I enjoy reading romances but I am not temperamentally suited to writing them. In my day to day life, I am deeply distrustful of glamour and charisma, both of which seem to me to be a form of deception.
The painting at the start of this post is “Hunters in the Snow” by Pieter Breugel. Before I ever felt air so cold it burnt my ears and froze my hair, it seemed I yearned to be in Winter’s fierce embrace. For me the meaning of “Hunters in the Snow” was clear: life must carve a place for itself in a beautiful but unforgiving world. That, of course, is what makes life exciting.
Giving Short Stories The Power Of A Movie
I believe that the power of the movies comes from one simple shared assumption between the movie-maker and the audience: nothing in a movie is unnecessary, irrelevant or accidental. Movies are packed with 100% meaning; this is what gives them the intensity that makes them so much more attractive than real life.
A Pagan Wish At Christmas
Christmas has always been a pagan time of year. My Pagan Christmas centres not on a born-to-die-for-me baby with parents too clueless to book accommodation when they traveled but on celebrating life; specifically my wife’s life and the fact that she continues to share it with me.
Lost in Translation
Naughty is a nursery term that we use to teach children not what is right or wrong but what they will be punished for and what they will not, assuming of course that they are caught.
Nice, as Little Red Riding-hood explained, does not mean good. Nice is one of those M&M words: it’s coated in polite, clean, socially acceptable sugar, but at its heart is the harder nut of almost addictive personal gratification.
Naughty but Nice is a marketing term that gives you permission to play with being bad, to scratch an itch without admitting to having a rash, to give up what you claim to believe to take what you think you need without confronting what any of that tells you about yourself.
Sin, Shame and Secrecy
Writing fiction, particularly erotica, is a very intimate process. Consciously or unconsciously, you mine your imagination and experience to provide the stone you sculpt your stories from.
As your fiction piles up behind you like a series of cast-off skins, themes and attitudes emerge that tell you and your readers something about how your mind works and where your heart lies.
It turns out that my heart lives in the gap between who I want to be and who I am.
Keeping It Real: how to avoid writer’s burnout
As a writer you have two opportunities to be real. The first is to be true to yourself: what you believe in, what you want the writing to achieve, what turns you on, what means something to you. The second is to be true to the expectations you set with your readers about the kind of story this is, about the kind of writer you are, about the kind of reader you expect them to be.
I’ve also archived some of my writing posts from my earlier blog
Five Things I’ve Learnt From Writing
Show, don’t tell -it’s a cop out
Flying Kites in Thunderstorms: writing lies to tell the truth
The Three Fs of Fiction Writing: Finding, Fixing, Finishing
Writing Beyond What You Know: telling old truths in new ways
Mike Kimera's Erotic Fiction 