I’ve been editing like crazy these past two weeks. Engaging in a veritable red pen/tracked-changes orgy in an effort to streamline and generally improve 60,000 words of smut. Culling unnecessary ‘frequent offenders’ (begone, evil ‘that’!) and chopping the heads off erotic clichés. But holy moly. Do you know how many of the latter there are out there? So many sexual metaphor bear traps, people. So many! And as I identified various offending turns of phrase (both in my work and while researching the work of others) I got to thinking about what some of these would look like when taken, er, literally …
‘Exploding’ Cock
A condition that commonly affects male protagonists at the point of orgasm, e.g. “his cock exploded”.
‘Dripping’ Pussy
I’m actually surprised there’s not an emergency call-out service for this one. The potential for turned-on women flooding houses seems rather alarming.
Orgasmic ‘Fireworks’
Oh, yes. This one is everywhere. The 4th of July and Guy Fawkes have nothing on couples in the throws of orgasm.
‘Needles’ of Pleasure
Um, I absolutely get needles in a fetish context but apparently pricking (pun intended) is a common side-effect of coming.
‘Squeezing’ of Breasts
They’re not lemons, for crying out loud!
There are about a billion more of these out there but, frankly, I don’t have time to (badly) draw them all. More’s the pity. I’ll be doing my best to avoid these going forwards but, no doubt, some will creep in without me realising. In the meantime, I’d better make sure I’ve got an emergency plumber on speed dial.
A certain erotica author we both know and love is going on and on about her new release “Clenching Submission” in a certain book that is coming out very soon. Ahem.
I very much look forward to the clenching.