15 Reasons to Become an Erotica Writer Right Now

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but erotica is in high demand right now. While there are a lot of current (and really great) erotica writers out there doing their thing, there is also a ton of room for new writers to break onto the scene. 

With Amazon, Literotica, and Kindle being the hot-spots for erotica publishers right now, there are lots of ways you can carve out your own piece of the territory. 

The launch of 50 Shades of Grey in 2012 was just the beginning of steamy, sexy stories that cater to the public’s interest in wet and wild sex. Erotica has really taken off since then and has shown no signs of slowing down, at least in any way that really matters. 

No matter what, there will always be a massive amount of people looking for the latest and greatest in sexual fantasy storytelling. Sex-positive content is becoming more normalized and wide-spread - so why not get in on the action? 

15. Erotic writing can change the way you view sex and sexuality. 

Writing erotica can put you more in tune with your body, your desires, and your sexuality in many different ways. One quick Google search of “how erotica helped me…” gives you headlines like “Erotica Made My Sex Life More Fulfilling” or “How Writing Erotica Helped Me Discover My Queer Sexual Identity.” 

Writing erotica can be a healthy way for you to express your sexual needs and desires - maybe even ones you haven’t realized yourself yet. It can allow you to look deep inside different sexualities, viewpoints, backgrounds and desires in order to better understand yourself and your potential partners in life. 

14. Creating is a beautiful, natural process. 

We have been creating things since prehistoric times. The oldest cave painting known to us right now is over 40 thousand years old. Creativity is something that humans need to thrive, to express themselves, to live, to remember. 

Through the years, we’ve come up with all different kinds of ways to create: we paint, we cook, we build houses, we create new medicines, we launch Youtube channels, create online content and yes...some of us even write steamy erotic musings. 

Find your own way to create something new. If that’s through painting - do that. If it’s through saucy stories about a sexy librarian and all the things she does to her submissive boy-toy to make up for his late fines, then do that. Also, send me the link because that sounds like something I want to read! 

13. Expressive writing has been proven to boost your mood and decrease stress levels. 

Expressive writing has so many benefits to it. If you’re writing a story that touches on healing after a traumatic event, maybe you’re mirroring something that’s happened in your own life. If this is the case, studies have shown that writing about trauma can help you heal. 

In 1986, professor James Pennebaker asked students in his class to spend 15 minutes writing about the biggest trauma in their lives, whatever that was for them. They were told to let go and include their deepest thoughts on the incident, even if they had never shared those thoughts before. 

They did this experiment for four days, each time spending 15 minutes recounting something traumatic in their lives. Pennebaker recounts that many times he would see students becoming emotional, and would always offer them an option to stop, which they never wanted to do. 

Meanwhile, a control group spent the same number of sessions writing a descriptive essay about something neutral such as the forest, their dorm room, or the cafeteria lunch menu. 

For months after this experiment, he monitored how often the students visited the health center. The students who had written about their traumatic events had made significantly fewer trips to the doctor in the following months. 

This was one of the first studies of its kind that suggested expressive writing was linked to any kind of emotional or physical well-being. Many studies since this one have taken place and all suggest the same thing: expressive writing is beneficial for us. 

12. Writing about sex can help you to feel more comfortable with sex in your own life.

Two years ago, I hardly ever watched porn, got upset if I found my husband watching porn and really, had the same 3 sex moves I had in college. Then I became a sex writer. I started to learn more about kinks, fetishes, and sexuality. I allowed my curiosity to thrive and put me onto things I’d never even considered before. Then I started writing erotica, and even more of myself opened up. 

It’s like I had access to this side of me I had tried to silence for so long. I let myself feel things that were scary and empowering and beautiful. I experimented with things both with my partner and on my own. Writing about all things sex has allowed me to venture into parts of my sexuality that remained hidden for far too long, and my sex life is so much better because of it. 

Embracing sex can be a bit scary - you’re vulnerable, open, your desires are out on display - but there is nothing more empowering or more fulfilling than giving in to something you’ve always fantasized about, whether that be IRL or through erotica writing. 

11. Erotica can give you a reason to experience self-pleasure. It can be a self-care, self-love system. 

Diving into the wild world of erotica writing can be a great form of self-care and even a way to express self-love. There is nothing that gets you in the mood to masturbate quite like writing something that brings your own fantasies to life. 

We all know by now that masturbation has many health benefits, and we’ve talked before in detail about the health benefits of orgasms...and yet - there is still so much stigma around it, especially for women. 

Sometimes, when you’re in a relationship, the relationship you have with yourself and your own body gets overlooked. And when you’re single, it can feel like a constant reminder that you’re not having sex with a partner. Sometimes the hustle and bustle of life can get in the way and we don’t make time or effort to please ourselves, and that’s a damn shame.

Whatever your relationship with self-lovin’ is, erotica writing can be a great way to get back in tune with your own body and schedule some much needed solo time. 

10. No more searching...now you can create the kind of porn you love. 

Finding porn you love can be really difficult. I mean, the internet is FULL of porn but finding exactly what you want when you want it can still be an overwhelming task. While the rise in audio porn is slowly allowing you to use more of your imagination to dream up your fantasy scenario, there is nothing more precise than writing your own porn. 

You can design your entire fantasy and bring it to life through words. You can experience things you’ve always wanted to but never been able to, or you can relive your best sexual adventures through writing. 

Finding porn you love gets a whole lot easier when you’re the one creating it. 

9. You can express thoughts and feelings you aren’t comfortable sharing with anyone else.

Your sexuality is deeply personal - it changes and evolves as you do. Sometimes sharing your sexuality with someone else can be scary. Whether you’re in a long-term relationship or a casual one, you start to wonder how your lover will react to finding out about your foot fetish or your used panty obsession. 

What if your partner doesn’t like your kinks? What if they are totally turned off by the things you want in bed? Expressing yourself through erotica writing can be a form of sexual release for when you aren’t able to share those fantasies with others. 

It’s also a great way to dip your toes in the waters of a new kink or fetish you’ve always been curious about...which leads us to our next reason.

8. You can use erotica as a coping mechanism or a way to move forward after experiencing trauma.

As someone who has struggled with sexual abuse in the past, I can tell you first-hand that writing about sex is therapeutic and emotional. It’s difficult and ground-breaking and very, very worthwhile. 

Many therapists use expressive writing with their clients to get them to process a traumatic event or incident. There are countless studies and experiments that have proven the effectiveness of writing down your thoughts in a traumatic time. 

In my own personal experience, after my trauma (read here), I steered clear of writing, something I’d loved to do for a long time before my assault. Eventually, I started writing again and found myself writing erotica that was rooted in the sexual acts that I’d experienced violently at the hands of my abuser. It was like my own version of exposure therapy. I wrote about it to see how it felt, what emotions it brought up, and how I could eventually come to terms with participating in those sexual experiences in real life. 

Using erotica to heal old wounds can be a very triggering and winding road, be patient with yourself and don’t force it. Write from a place of safety and test your boundaries, but respect them as well. Eventually, maybe you will have a finished piece of erotica that means so much to you because it is a part of your own story. 

7. Diving into new kinks and fetishes...you might learn a little something.

Writing about consensual non-consent is going to give you an inside look at how this kink is used properly and safely and why people might be turned on by the idea of force in a consensual scenario. Similarly, writing about bondage may give you some new ideas on things you’d like to try in your own relationship or by yourself. Yep, that’s right - some bondage can be done solo. Do you know how I learned that? I wrote about it! 

I’ve got some other really crazy facts stuck in my head from all the things I’ve written on Sofia Gray - for example, do you know that each male ejaculation is up to 5% semen? Or that, in 2019, average heterosexual couples were having sex for 19 minutes each session (10 minutes of foreplay with 9 minutes of penetrative intercourse)? I know these things because I researched them for articles. 

There are so many different kinks and fetishes that you can incorporate into your writing to make things interesting, and while you’re at it, you can do a little research on those topics and see if something piques your interest. If not, that’s totally fine...but if there is something you find a bit intriguing, follow up with that idea, write more about it and see if it’s something you’d like to incorporate into your own sex life. 

6. Expressing fantasies you can’t live out IRL can be a great release.

Maybe you’re in a monogamous relationship and want to live out some wild threesome scene with the bartender at your favorite dive bar. Or maybe you’re single and want to live out your ultimate BDSM fantasy with a dom that you trust and already have a relationship with. Or maybe you have a fetish that, for whatever reason, you can’t act on right now. Channel all of that into your writing, friend! 

Writing is a really great coping mechanism (as we’ve already discovered) and writing from a place of total sexual frustration due to not being able to act on your desires can create a really intense, passionate fantasy for your reader. I’ve read erotica books that, while reading them, I can tell how much tension and desire was put into each chapter. Reading these kinds of stories is like the ultimate foreplay because you’re just constantly feeling the writer getting close to climax but not quite being satisfied enough until the very end. 

Being able to channel these kinds of emotions into your writing is what makes a good writer a great writer. 

5. Writing sexual adventures can help you come up with some fun new ideas for you and your partner. 

Writing erotica isn’t always from personal desire or experiences - it’s not always about what you want. Sometimes your erotica stories have nothing to do with you and are about something and someone else entirely. 

But sometimes, ideas slip into the story that you can’t help but acknowledge came from your deepest curiosities, and that’s totally okay. It’s healthy, even, to explore things you want. 

Think of writing as the first step in exploring whether a new kink is something you want to add into your current sex life. Writing about bondage is a lot less intimidating than buying a bondage kit and asking your partner to tie you to your headboard, right? 

So let your inner desires drive the narrative for a while and see where it takes you. Maybe you’ll be satisfied with living it out through words or maybe you’ll become curious enough to try it out IRL. 

4. Building an audience and connecting with others from various communities. 

One of the best things about writing erotica, in my opinion, is getting to share it with other people. It’s extremely vulnerable and exciting - you publish something to a platform like Literotica, where thousands of people all of a sudden have total access to your writing...it’s thrilling. 

All of a sudden you’re scrolling through comments on your submission about how people love your style, love your ideas, were turned on by your words...you start to realize that you’ve shared a part of yourself (whether the piece was based on your own desires or not) and the feedback is really positive. 

Connecting through social media with people who have read your articles, I can tell you from personal experience, is really amazing. I’ve had people reach out to me and tell me my article on sexual trauma resonated with them on a level they didn’t think was possible. I’ve had people DM me on Twitter to tell me they love how open I was about my cam-sex with a stranger phase or the fact that I’m turned on by French accents. 

Connecting with other people who either have the same desires as what you’ve written about or just appreciate your work is not only a huge confidence booster to keep going but it’s also a big reason why many people get into writing sex-positive content in the first place - to connect and help other people explore their sexuality in healthy, positive ways. 

3. You could turn writing erotica into a job. 

You can be paid to write about sex. Isn’t that the dream? 

Let’s talk about how you can turn erotica writing into a sexy side hustle (or maybe something more!) Something I bet you didn’t know: there is a HUGE market on Amazon for erotic stories. I’m talking about a massive, exploitable market that you can take advantage of. Half my Twitter following sells erotic stories through Amazon. 

Three tips for getting started in erotica writing: 

• Study up on what makes a good erotica story. The best way to do this is to read some erotica and study up on good writing techniques. What do you like about erotica books? What pulls you in? What do you, as a reader, like to see in a story? 
• Research what you’re writing about...sex! While some things may seem obvious to you, your readers are vast and very unique - try to write about things that are easy to understand or relatable at first. Make sure your facts are checked, too - that sex positions are actually possible and that the things your characters are doing are not only possible but probable in the situation they are in. Very few people like to read erotica that could never realistically happen. 
• Join a writing group or community on social media and get some feedback. Sending the first few pages to another trusted writer to get an opinion can really make or break the direction you’re writing yourself into. Feedback is super useful and using the hashtag #writingcommunity, specifically on Twitter, will get you a ton of new writer friends to bounce ideas off of. 

Who knows, you may be able to turn this whole erotica writing thing into a legitimate side hustle - I mean, this person made 10k in one month by writing and selling anonymous erotica stories. 

That could be you, with a bit of hard work and dedication! 

2. You’re contributing to all the sex-positive content on the internet and helping others become comfortable with their sexuality.  

One of the best things about writing for Sofia Gray, by far, is the idea of helping people celebrate their sexuality through the things I write. I have ideas, I pitch them, they get approved or denied. If they are approved, I write about them. I pour my heart into them, I research for hours, I make sure the facts are checked and the writing style suits the topic. 

Then it gets published and people all over the world are able to read it. The idea that something I thought of, dreamt up, worked hard on and made into a reality is now out there for the world to read, it’s a really empowering thing. It’s amazing to work hard on something that is then made for public consumption - why do you think content creation has become such a massive thing in our digital world? People love to create and consume digital content, and you can be a part of that in a really important way. 

We’re not just creating content by writing erotica or publishing sex-positive content - we’re holding a sign and screaming into a megaphone that it’s okay to celebrate your sexuality, to love who you love, to desire what you desire and that it’s also okay to talk about those things. Being part of the sex-positive content movement is something that you should be proud of, no matter what scale your writing is at right now. 

1. Writing sexy stories is just really fun. 

One last reason to write erotica: it’s just fun. Whether you picture yourself as a modern-day Carrie Bradshaw with less of a spoiled New Yorker vibe (like myself) or you want to create a whole new pen-name and serve up steamy, kinky and edgy erotica stories - you can have fun with it in any way you want. 

Make this a life goal or a sexy side hustle, or keep it as a fun hobby - whatever you decide to do, erotica is always a fun way to blow off some steam and writing, as far as hobbies go, is way healthier than partying and way more exciting than knitting. 

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