Getting Off On Your Handiwork

A little over a week ago, Alice of aliceinbondageland.com fame tweeted that she was getting turned on by editing fetish videos that she'd just played a part in. That kind of threw me for a loop, because I've always had a hard time getting aroused by erotica that I've produced (whether stories or scene logs or pictures), and I'd figured that was the norm. Inspired by that tweet, I posted a poll on Twitter to see how erotica producers felt about their own work. To my surprise, not only did most producers say that they found it easier to get aroused by their own productions, but no one else reported having a more difficult time.

On the one hand, it's easy to see why people would be more aroused by erotic media that they played a part in, because many producers create work that targets their own fetishes and other interests. Especially for producers who specialize in relatively niche fetishes and other markets, their work might literally be the only work out there that caters to what it is that gets them off. Even with as much erotica as you can find on the Internet these days, there are still lots of fetishes out there that don't get much, if any, attention.

For me, though, I think the problem is that because I created my work, I know exactly what's going to happen, and part of what arouses me is the surprise of going through a story or video or photoset, that "what's gonna happen next" anticipation. Even going back to stories I wrote over a decade ago and completely forgot about, I just can't get that aroused when I read them. It's almost like I need that outside perspective, someone else tackling that thing I like, for me to get aroused. (Intelligence is definitely a turn-on for me, so experiencing someone else's brilliance may also be what gets me going.)

Part of the reason I wrote California Bondage Sorority Book One (and why I'm working on the sequel right now) is because I want my work to inspire others to create their own takes on the fetishes and predicaments and such that I put into my books. A good deal of that is just selfishly hoping that I wind up with more material to get off to. I have a hard time believing that I'm the only erotica producer who has a hard time getting aroused by their own work, though, and it makes me wonder if there's a market for some kind of exchange system, where producers of erotica can cater to another producer's fetishes and then get catered to in kind. I don't have the slightest clue about how and where to start something like that, so I'll just throw that idea out there for some of you to run with.