I work in a library. Bear with me, I can see your eyes glazing over, but there is a point here.
I am not a librarian. I have not earned the right to call myself that by going to grad school and having my brain replaced with that of an alien. I am what they (and by they I do mean the librarians, no offense to any present) call a "para"professional. Meaning since I did not go and learn how to catalog my fabric scraps I am not a professional at my job, even though not one "professional" librarian in my library can check out a book. Yay for double standards.
What does this have to do with writing? Specifically with writing erotic romance and erotica?
The same double standard applies. If you like sex, you'e somehow less literary. If your erotic (note...erotic) books have a lot of racy, raunchy scenes, you're less than acceptable in polite company, you don't rate a review on the big dogs' sites, and other people who purport to be erotica writers call your work less than complimentary things. (Like oh, trash, wretched, too light on plot, despite the fact that your test readers found it angsty enough to *cry* over it.)
So what is it? Is it latent puritanism? Is it just that some people should be writing traditional romance rather than erotica, but have found that the addition of gay love pushes them out of that market? Or do I have a fundamental misunderstanding of erotic?
No, not all of my favorite erotic readings are explicit. But I don't see why expicitness, as long as it's well done, can't be literate.
