hi! I read your past couple of asks on the importance of an id list/sexy turtle enclosure and could I trouble you to speak more on that? how do you figure out what goes in your sexy turtle enclosure, and how does that translate into writing smut?
if that's too much work, could you point towards the sierra simone/nikki sloane resource where they talk about it?
Sadly this was an in-person workshop during Romancing The Craft about three years back! There’s no video or blog
I did save the pamphlet though, and here’s the sexy turtle enclosure part
I’ll transcribe these pages and discuss my thoughts on them once i’m home from my walkies~
Transcript under the cut
Page one:
THINKING ABOUT YOUR EROTIC VOICE
This is about identifying what you love to write, and what specifically makes your books your books. This is very closely related to brand, but while branding is a front-of-the-house conception, this is purely back-of-the-house. You will definitely use what you come up with here for branding purposes later, but for now don't worry about making anything sound pithy or catchy.
Starting points for identifying voice:
• What makes your work, your work?
• What is your personal ethos, your mythos even?
• What is your voice?
What sets your voice apart?
What are the kinds of stories only you can tell?
Only you are this precise fusion of experience, hopes, dreams, turn-ons, random bits of knowledge and fascinations--what are the stories that come out of that precise fusion?
More starting points:
• when a reader picks up a book written by me, they can expect…. (Blank space here)
• I want to be known for writing books that… (blank space here)
• if I had to write the same kind of book for the next three years, what book would I want it to be?
The most important parts of this entire exercise are the why—why do you write— and the specifics.
Why: Why do you write? What drives you to the keyboard? What was the last story that you had to write, that energized the heck out of you to create? How can you turn that into a way forward creatively?
Get specific: Even a broad vision should have something specific to you and your work—if you're thinking your brand is something like small town romance, then you're in good company—with at least five hundred other authors. Start figuring out what is particular to your stories. Small town and they all have nerdy characters? Small town and featuring queer characters? Small town and all heroines in their thirties/forties? Get as granular as you can!
Drill down, and remember-this is for you, not for marketing (yet).
What you want to identify is what is uniquely you. Your patch of the forest.
You're creating a voice and a vision and a space for stories that readers will come to recognize as a destination.
Page two:
APPROACHES TO WRITING EROTIC
THE TORTOISE ENCLOSURE (OR THE SEXY HOLODECK):
How do I write sex knowing that my well-meaning aunt/sister/bestie/dog groomer will insist on reading it?
We hear a lot about silencing the inner editor when we write, and we definitely need to do that, but we also need to silence our inner pearl-clutcher. We have to ignore our generated projections of what we think the people around us will say.
A friend once sent me a speech by John Cleese about creativity, and he talks about this idea of a tortoise enclosure. He says that the creative brain is a deep and slow thinking brain, and it needs space away from the hustle and necessities of productivity in order to work properly.
I think we need a tortoise enclosure for erotic thinking as well. A mental maybe even physical space-that is entirely free of external voices and pressures.
Go wild.
Fantasize deeply.
You're in the sexy tortoise enclosure now and you're safe to be as dirty as you want.
Everything—plot, setting, details—comes through an erotic lens now:
Everything— not just sex—is now sexy.
Think of billionaire romances you've read-sleek cars, bespoke suits, floor to ceiling windows in giant offices. Think of Twilight. The book that launched thousands of fanfics even though there's no actual sex in it all. You can achieve an atmosphere of sensuality before you ever unzip a single zipper.
Food is sexy! Clothes are sexy! Architecture is sexy! Health insurance is sexy! Everything is sexy!
We're in our tortoise enclosure/sexy holodeck and everything is sexy here!
And remember, once you leave the sexy holodeck, if you aren't sure how your scene might go over, have no fear! If you are turned on by something, there are readers out there who will be turned on by it too.
That's the Sloane & Simone guarantee.
End transcript
So the “id list” (id as in ego, superego) was another thing they went over in person and wasn’t on the worksheet, but pretty much the gist of it was similar enough to the above two that I feel like I’m repeating myself when I say. Your id list is just a collection— written or not— of things, sensations, or concepts that always get your hindbrain going. Simone listed “broody men in greatcoats” as a big thing on her id list, for example. I’m pretty sure “big old libraries” was mentioned, too.
On my id list is, obviously, “tall women with black hair and top energy” and “stoic people losing composure”
You don’t need to know what’s on your list right away. This is the kind of thing that takes a few decades of writing to develop, I think.
But a good place to start is the next time you write something and think “i’m cooking with gas!” write down some of the things that are in that story on your tentative id list and see if they pop up again. Don’t consult your id list like a pokedex! Let it sit on its own corner and ferment a bit in darkness while you forget about it and indulge deeply in your next creative project.
A lot of the stuff in this workshop turned out to be stuff I was already doing, albeit subconsciously. When I allowed myself to dig deep and start doing them with intention, I noticed an improvement in my writing.
