We all have multiple talents to offer the world as artists, writers, painters, musicians and performers. One of the greatest talents that people in the world of art have to offer is the ability to teach someone their craft and trade within their genre. For me, whenever a guest artist from the worldwide community pays a visit to the college campus, I make it my mission to go to the lecture or workshop and learn something new.
Based on experience from interacting with a guest artist, I can pass on this newfound knowledge to my colleagues and refine my skills as a scholarly artist. Last week I participated in a workshop designed to help people write compelling erotica stories. Fiona Zedde, an erotica writer from Tampa, Fla., hosted a workshop on campus last Thursday titled “Writing with the Senses.”
I love to write, and I’ve always had a secret interest in writing erotica fiction. Though I primarily hone my writing skills through the Voice, it is quite useful to expose yourself to different styles of writing that you are less familiar with.
As a theatre and dance major, I usually attend these kinds of workshops because I find it beneficial to learn from other artists their style of performance. The art of performance can be translated into any type of work for the stage, so whatever you learn from a guest artist you can use to develop your own craft and create a production based on a vast knowledge of performativity.
Though a performance and writing workshop operate in different manners, the recent writing workshop that I participated in allowed me to sharpen my creativity in what I would consider sexy temptation fiction. We didn’t immediately jump into writing our first sex scene. Instead, we went back to the basics and got reacquainted with our senses. Zedde had us close our eyes and eat a piece of fruit, savoring it.
As I munched on my luscious strawberry, I felt the firm and smooth surface of the fruit, thinking in amazement of a multitude illustrative phrases I could use to describe this experience. It was as if I was building a palette of effective language for erotica writing.
What Zedde accomplished was a demystification of the cheesy hot sexy novel. By reminding us to not write cheaply and to push for originality by creating a little bit everyday, I grew confident that I, too, could be a writer of erotica.† It was also a thrill when we shared what we wrote to the group. When I had the chance to read what I wrote to the people in room, people laughed like rambuncous hyenas; my audience like the surprise element that I added into the story.
While I would like to share a line or two of the comedic erotic moment I composed during that evening, you’ll have to wait until a publisher picks up my next work.
Well, in reality, the language and form of what I wrote would not exactly be safe to broadcast in this newspaper. Reading erotica can be a personal and enjoyable experience as I found out from Fiona. So I would recommend picking up one of her books. To learn more about Fiona and her work, visit fionazedde.com.