Peta’s Comments (group member since Dec 21, 2013)

Peta’s comments from the The C word - why so many haters? group.

Long time inactive...
But couldn't resist sharing this great piece of research:
http://mytinysecrets.com/why-consciou...

Thanks. It really helps a lonely writer's ego... Now all I need to do is sell some books...

Finally - Respectability!

http://clementineford.tumblr.com/post...

Really excited today (in my small way...)! I got my third 5-star review on Amazon. The best thing is that two of them are from people I don't know. (Being very strictly pseudonymous, I can't ask friends to post something nice)
So maybe the free Giveaway is starting to pay off.

My 'training' in writing sex scenes came from a period where my partner and I had to endure a long continental separation. It was just before the internet/email thing got going, so we had to write old-fashioned daily letters. We would always end (after The News...) with a hectic session of what would now probably be sexting - but much more elaborate and FUN! We would write about what we would do to one another... Kept us alive and functioning.... and we, as a by-product, learnt a surprising amount about each other's preferences. This is probably why I can't write in the BDSM/fetish-type genres - I write what I like.

There's a problem with TED Talks - they're very, very moreish.
However, I was a bit surprised that they also occasionally ban some of their own talks.
This one is particularly apt in regard to what we've been discussing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci5p1O...

I once had a really embarrassing dinner with some visitors from America. When I said: 'It's time for pud now.' They started sniggering and then dissolved into near hysterics. On the plus side it was a real ice-breaker...
Gemma, I've tried to send you a Friend request but GoodReads seems to be playing fast and loose... Let me know if you don't get it.

This is sooo exciting. As I've said elsewhere on GoodReads, it's lonely when you're skulking behind a pseudonym, unable to bring in your usual friends.

So, thank you, Gina, I responded instantly to your Friend request.
I was introduced to this group by the lovely Charlie B, who was a little concerned by my use of the word. It's really fantastic finally being able to talk with like-minded people.

I don't really think of myself as a writer of erotic fiction. My first and third are mostly family sagas, the second I think what you'd call perigrinatory (to coin a word...). Second and third are a little way from being ready for publishing - it's a problem fitting in job and family and the publicising needed when you self-publish.

And to finish - with reference to lists.... The first is fun, the second, gob-smacking:
http://www.autostraddle.com/listling-...
http://www.reddit.com/r/sex/comments/...

I hope we all have a great together New Year!! And that we can get people to accept the words (except, of course, for the openly insulting and denigratory and offensive) with reverence and fun.

Wow! and I thought I knew them all (or most of them...).
Here's an extract from my novel in which the female side is enumerated (I'll keep a lid on the male side as that section is a bit too risqué...):
"Nick had handled it in the only way he knew how. When he was certain he could not escape he had done two things. The first was to swear Amy to silence on the use of these words. He explained how naughty people had turned them into swear-words, very rude words, and that she should not do this. It was a measure how seriously she took her father and her promises that she was in her 20s before she succinctly told another driver on the road that he was a C#*@! - and then was bathed in a shower of guilt for several days.
The second thing he did was list, as clinically as possible, many of the names for that sacred place. Beginning with vagina, labia, vulva, uterus and clitoris (he left out the functions of each as he had, for once, thought ahead and realised the danger of the clitoris). Then, starting with pussy (she liked this one and ever after referred to her own by this name), he travelled through cunt and cunny and cooch, gash, quim and slit, beaver and bush, twat and front-bum (she thought this was very funny) and several others - leaving out one or two of the most disgusting. Claire had lain in on the bed, naked, legs slightly spread to enable cursory visual examination - feeling a little like a lab specimen - and counting, slowly and gravely in her head, to more than 260 as Nick enumerated and Amy questioned. "
A bit later his wife (Claire) says - when their inquisitive daughter has been sent to bed with a head stuffed full of new words - '...some of the words you came up with! 'Nettle bed! - that's downright insulting. And where did you get 'cabbage' from?’
It's amazing how many words there are. Personally I find most of them very funny, but I do come from a very unjudgmental family...

I'm with you here, though I can understand why so many women hate it. Like all such words it has been used as a term of contempt and insult for far too long. I personally think that it's way overdue for us to reclaim it. Here I am a disciple of the Lenny Bruce technique. Language can only affect you if you allow it to. My partner and I have always used these words (the other C word, the P word for the same thing, plus many others) in the most loving and tender way. I intend to keep using all these words in my novels in the same way. One day I hope people will lose the contempt.