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Marin Answers FAQ
10 years ago
Sometimes I get questions on being a writer and writer in general and their usually the sames ones so I thought I might do a few to give fans an insight on what it's like to do what I do and that not. Just a quick note this isn't the same for everyone and experiences may vary.
Q:How long have you been writing (smut an otherwise)?
A: I started writing when I was about 11 or so? Lots of stupid kid stuff that was based on cartoons and anime because I was incredibly into that stuff and it's where I drew my inspiration from. Needless to say I was pretty bad at it for a long time and I even did rping on gaiaonline and other sites like that and again it was still really, really bad. Like I cringe over the stuff I thought was good. I started writing smut when I was around 16 and that was still when I was in the role playing game which was still really, really...er...bad but I still kept at it, it started with fanfics and then I got into the furry fandom and well...here I am now? There really isn't much of a progression or a moment where I just found my pen and went, "I have found my craft!" It was just a thing that I did.
Q:Do you ever get off to your own writing?
A: A little personal but yeah I do and it's actually hard not to and can be an inconvenience because you have to sit and cool down for a bit but that can also throw you off your game and it's like, "FUCK YOU LIBIDO!" It's really just for my own personal stuff really or a commissioner that gives me a scenario where I'm just totally down for it and my mind runs wild. And before you say "That's Weird" and "Artist don't do that you freak!" You have to know that you're literally sitting down and typing out your dirty thoughts, dwelling on the personal or commissioned lustful antics of two characters that are constantly doing the dirty in your head and it just keeps going. At times the most you worry about is if you've said the word "cock" or "ass" too many times in one paragraph or if your dialogue is quickly spiraling into mindless hentai speak which in the moment sounds great but then you read it back to yourself and you're disgusted by it. You're not concerned with anatomy as you are with trying to set up words that will excite and arouse your commissioner and your reader. Your job is to literally give them a boner with words if you're a writer of erotica and that's not always easy.
Q:Do you ever get discouraged about your writing?
A: Yeah mainly because there's no real feedback involved or a sense of growth in this community. Most people see a story on tumblr and if they have to scroll for more than 15 seconds to reach the end they flip out and just click away and don't bother to give it a chance. The whole TL:DR thing kind of sucks when that's your job and you're trying to scrap a few bucks together to get some art for your characters. A lot of feedback that you get is opinion based, there's nothing that people pick out in your style of wording or phrasing that you could improve on and what not. They just give you an opinionated response that does nothing for you. "That's hot" or "I loved it." is great and all but there's gotta be something more there. And that leads into the insecurity of, "Is my craft actually worth it? Can I make a living off this? Could I open a patreon and have people support projects I want to do but need money for?" Those issues come up and some writers really do just give up because of page views or submission views and nothing to really show for it other than a number.
But it does make you feel warm inside when you have those readers who tell you that you do amazing jobs at bringing characters to life and giving them bits and pieces of personality that make them seem real. The things that you can't always do with just a single picture. So that's always nice to.
Q: What's writers block like?
A:Imagine you're cruising down an open road in the fastest car imaginable. There's not an obstruction in sight and you've never been more alive or excited about something ever. And then. All of a sudden. Out of fucking no where. A 4X4 mile block of obsidian crashes 100 yards ahead of you and you just grind to a screeching halt and are forced to look at this thing for who knows how long. It's just there! You didn't want it to be there! BUT IT'S FUCKING THERE AND IT WON'T GO AWAY. Sometimes you have to pray that you can nuke it and other times you just gotta wait until you get enough fuel to just crash through it with your car.
Q:What's something(s) you hate about being a writer?
A: The general sense that people don't take you as seriously as they do artist? It's really that it seems that people don't have the attention span to even give reading a story a chance. In this community the payoff has to be instantaneous or it's not worth it and lets be honest there are people who are gonna read this journal and do the thing I was talking about before hand. There's also a lot of negative connotations about being a smut writer or an erotica author that people still hold onto. "They're just perverts writing down their dirty ideas" "They just sit there and jerk off to characters and write about them" "Hey baby you want sum fuk" that kind of shit and there are a lot of writers out there who do that kind o stuff in this community and it paints a bad light for the rest of us because unlike art you can't judge a story right from the get go. You can't open the file and know how it's gonna turn out, it's something you have to give a chance on but people have been burned so heavily by perverts who call themselves writers that people don't even bother with the rest of us.
Q:What's one thing you wish was easier?
A: Collabing. Doing trades with people from different media. Writing comics for people and helping them explore their own characters and make their own world. A lot of that stuff would be so much fun to do but there's just this fear and lack of knowledge of how to go about this because of the lack of intermedia mingling there is. What would be a fair trade between and author and writer? Is it worth going into a trade? How would my audience receive being exposed to purely written work as opposed to the regular content I've produced? There's a lot of things that I wish would be easier and I've been in talk with people lately and we're discussing it now but it still is a massive grey area and it's just a lot of troubleshooting left undone.
Q:What's your favorite thing about being an author?
I get to give characters personality traits, dialogue and inner monologues that people wouldn't really get in a stand alone picture. I get the challenge of trying to capture all the detail I can into a product that isn't boring but exciting and can sweep people into a whirlwind of emotion. I get to touch on things that artist won't do as much or even at all sometimes. I can build worlds and create concepts and characters that are meaningful before they get a visual representation...I get to play a roll in my characters lives. They grow as I grow and I love that about what I do.
Q:How long have you been writing (smut an otherwise)?
A: I started writing when I was about 11 or so? Lots of stupid kid stuff that was based on cartoons and anime because I was incredibly into that stuff and it's where I drew my inspiration from. Needless to say I was pretty bad at it for a long time and I even did rping on gaiaonline and other sites like that and again it was still really, really bad. Like I cringe over the stuff I thought was good. I started writing smut when I was around 16 and that was still when I was in the role playing game which was still really, really...er...bad but I still kept at it, it started with fanfics and then I got into the furry fandom and well...here I am now? There really isn't much of a progression or a moment where I just found my pen and went, "I have found my craft!" It was just a thing that I did.
Q:Do you ever get off to your own writing?
A: A little personal but yeah I do and it's actually hard not to and can be an inconvenience because you have to sit and cool down for a bit but that can also throw you off your game and it's like, "FUCK YOU LIBIDO!" It's really just for my own personal stuff really or a commissioner that gives me a scenario where I'm just totally down for it and my mind runs wild. And before you say "That's Weird" and "Artist don't do that you freak!" You have to know that you're literally sitting down and typing out your dirty thoughts, dwelling on the personal or commissioned lustful antics of two characters that are constantly doing the dirty in your head and it just keeps going. At times the most you worry about is if you've said the word "cock" or "ass" too many times in one paragraph or if your dialogue is quickly spiraling into mindless hentai speak which in the moment sounds great but then you read it back to yourself and you're disgusted by it. You're not concerned with anatomy as you are with trying to set up words that will excite and arouse your commissioner and your reader. Your job is to literally give them a boner with words if you're a writer of erotica and that's not always easy.
Q:Do you ever get discouraged about your writing?
A: Yeah mainly because there's no real feedback involved or a sense of growth in this community. Most people see a story on tumblr and if they have to scroll for more than 15 seconds to reach the end they flip out and just click away and don't bother to give it a chance. The whole TL:DR thing kind of sucks when that's your job and you're trying to scrap a few bucks together to get some art for your characters. A lot of feedback that you get is opinion based, there's nothing that people pick out in your style of wording or phrasing that you could improve on and what not. They just give you an opinionated response that does nothing for you. "That's hot" or "I loved it." is great and all but there's gotta be something more there. And that leads into the insecurity of, "Is my craft actually worth it? Can I make a living off this? Could I open a patreon and have people support projects I want to do but need money for?" Those issues come up and some writers really do just give up because of page views or submission views and nothing to really show for it other than a number.
But it does make you feel warm inside when you have those readers who tell you that you do amazing jobs at bringing characters to life and giving them bits and pieces of personality that make them seem real. The things that you can't always do with just a single picture. So that's always nice to.
Q: What's writers block like?
A:Imagine you're cruising down an open road in the fastest car imaginable. There's not an obstruction in sight and you've never been more alive or excited about something ever. And then. All of a sudden. Out of fucking no where. A 4X4 mile block of obsidian crashes 100 yards ahead of you and you just grind to a screeching halt and are forced to look at this thing for who knows how long. It's just there! You didn't want it to be there! BUT IT'S FUCKING THERE AND IT WON'T GO AWAY. Sometimes you have to pray that you can nuke it and other times you just gotta wait until you get enough fuel to just crash through it with your car.
Q:What's something(s) you hate about being a writer?
A: The general sense that people don't take you as seriously as they do artist? It's really that it seems that people don't have the attention span to even give reading a story a chance. In this community the payoff has to be instantaneous or it's not worth it and lets be honest there are people who are gonna read this journal and do the thing I was talking about before hand. There's also a lot of negative connotations about being a smut writer or an erotica author that people still hold onto. "They're just perverts writing down their dirty ideas" "They just sit there and jerk off to characters and write about them" "Hey baby you want sum fuk" that kind of shit and there are a lot of writers out there who do that kind o stuff in this community and it paints a bad light for the rest of us because unlike art you can't judge a story right from the get go. You can't open the file and know how it's gonna turn out, it's something you have to give a chance on but people have been burned so heavily by perverts who call themselves writers that people don't even bother with the rest of us.
Q:What's one thing you wish was easier?
A: Collabing. Doing trades with people from different media. Writing comics for people and helping them explore their own characters and make their own world. A lot of that stuff would be so much fun to do but there's just this fear and lack of knowledge of how to go about this because of the lack of intermedia mingling there is. What would be a fair trade between and author and writer? Is it worth going into a trade? How would my audience receive being exposed to purely written work as opposed to the regular content I've produced? There's a lot of things that I wish would be easier and I've been in talk with people lately and we're discussing it now but it still is a massive grey area and it's just a lot of troubleshooting left undone.
Q:What's your favorite thing about being an author?
I get to give characters personality traits, dialogue and inner monologues that people wouldn't really get in a stand alone picture. I get the challenge of trying to capture all the detail I can into a product that isn't boring but exciting and can sweep people into a whirlwind of emotion. I get to touch on things that artist won't do as much or even at all sometimes. I can build worlds and create concepts and characters that are meaningful before they get a visual representation...I get to play a roll in my characters lives. They grow as I grow and I love that about what I do.
I find myself agreeing with much of this. :)