Strategies for writing & publishing about a kink-related adventure

January 14, 2019 7:27 AM

I am possibly going to embark on a fun kink-related adventure this year and would like to document the process. Help me figure out how I should document this, as well as work out whether it's better to be anonymous (hence the anonymity of this question) or go by my usual pen name.

I (a queer gender-non-conforming woman-ish of colour, if that makes a difference) am looking into getting mentored/privately tutored by dominatrices on learning how to set better boundaries and develop self-confidence. I have and have had other avenues to build these skills (including ongoing therapy), and I also have some light involvement with kink in the past, so I felt like there was something I could learn from dommes that I could apply to my situation even if I don't specifically aim to be a domme. (Also, this is one of my biggest long-time fantasies-slash-bucket-list-items: to be mentored and tutored by a powerful domme as her protege.)

My main plan involves private classes with someone in town that has trained with and academically studied dominatrixes for a long time and currently develops training programs for other women interested in domination, including professionals. I asked her whether she'd be interested in helping me with my issues and she is super keen and has drawn up an entire lesson plan already. As I was talking to friends about this (and swooning like hell) an acquaintance who turns out to be a long-time prodomme reached out to offer mentoring in similar skills as well (extra swoon).

I'm a life-long professional writer and have documented my past adventures, so I would like to document this as well: what I've learned, my personal journey, and so on. I could at least write online, whether through online blogging or social media (which I am super active on), or finding an online magazine that would like to run a regular column from me (I expect this adventure to take at least a few months if not the whole year). I'm also tinkering with the idea of turning this experience into a book - as it is I already feel like I'm a character in some kind of queer femme BDSM novel. Ideally I would like to earn some money from this, at least to fund my learning journey (those classes aren't cheap), but I'm well aware of the precarious nature of funding for writing, especially stuff vaguely related to sex or kink.

I'm also debating whether or not to go anonymous/pseudonymous with this. I have a pretty public profile (albeit under a pen name but it's not that far away from my legal name and more people know me by it anyway) and have been pretty open about sexuality and kink, so this wouldn't really be THAT unusual. Indeed, this experience would probably be way less sexual than some of the things I've written or made art about before. At the same time, I am concerned about possible doxxing or threats to my safety, as well as any possible jobhunt consequences (it's hard enough as it is for multiple reasons), and it might also be useful to have a 'character' dedicated to this so that friends & followers who aren't into kink don't have to engage with it.

The anonymity thing may affect my ability to earn money from this too. I have an active Patreon (and various online payment options) and could just post stuff there, but I'm also well aware of their recent crackdown on sexuality-related content - and me arguing that I'm not being trained in how to flog a naked body probably won't fly. If I go with a separate persona, I'd have to set up a whole new thing.

I have a few options:

1. Set up an anonymous blog/Medium/social media profile and document it there - the problem would be in outreach and promotion. I could slyly share it on my usual channels, but if I'm trying to avoid making a link between this persona and my usual one that seems counterproductive.

2. Set up a dedicated blog and just use my usual pen name for it - it'll take some effort to find readers and there's the potential safety issue

3. Find an online publication that would take this as a regular column - I'm actually a contributor for a well-known queer women's web magazine and could potentially pitch this. However, they don't pay all that much, and they're less interested in ongoing columns and more into one-off essays. They do have a membership-only section that pays a little more, but it's still not necessarily a lot. So I'm also open to suggestions from other sites/publications that would be into this and which I could pitch to. (There's also the added wrinkle of anonymity/pseudonymity vs my usual pen name to consider.)

4. Don't document this online, save it for the book - not that I've ever written a book before, it may be a while before the book happens, and whether it pays off at the end is a gamble. And I won't get immediate feedback or comments. But it could help me gain some perspective over my experience, compared to the more in-the-moment nature of blogging.

5. Document this online AND make a book about it - though would I need to take my online blogging down once I'm ready to shop the manuscript around? Would anonymity make a difference in being taken seriously ("how can you prove that it's you?")?

I'm not opposed to other media forms such as podcasting or video, but I've found them to take forever and a day to edit and prepare, whereas I'm way way faster with writing. I'm also open to any other option that I haven't considered.

You can send me an email at [e-mail] if you wanna chat privately.

posted by anonymous to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

This sounds like a book to me. I'm thinking a la A.J. Jacobs or Kevin Roose. Here's a list of similar type authors, look at the ones writing about "I did this neat thing for X time and here's what happened."

It's a genre. It sells.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:06 AM on January 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

I also vote for book, I think that would be a great means of documenting and reflecting on your experiences! I also think this would be a perfect format if you are inclined to include some background info (e.g., history, statistics, the scene where you live, and so on).

Disclosure: I'm an academic so this option might just be the way my heart leans. But I would totally buy that book!
posted by DTMFA at 8:48 AM on January 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Blogging in search of a book deal is also definitely a thing people do, and when I've seen it done the blog posts have stayed up even after publication. The thing to do seems to be to make sure you're not using all your material in the blog, and to use the book to weave the old and new material together in a bigger-than-the-sum-of-its-parts way, such that even regular blog readers have a reason to buy it.

I do think writing for an online publication would be your best bet, and the reason I think that is because moderation is going to be really, really important if you do this online. I love (small, carefully curated corners of) the kink community, but at its worst it is racist and sexist as hell, completely fucking gross about sucking people into sexualized interactions without their consent (like, more so than mainstream culture, even mainstream online culture), and really aggressively shitty to dominant women in particular. So, like, while doxxing and privacy are important concerns, I think it is worth being equally concerned with the people who show up in your comments and mentions wanting to humiliate you or act out some obsessive fantasy towards you — having to deal with that stuff every day really wears you down even if they can't actually harm you. Having someone else around whose job it is to deal with that seems like it would be very worthwhile.

So, it sounds like you might be thinking of Autostraddle? I feel like Autostraddle would be great for this, not just for their audience, but because they do actually seem to do comment moderation pretty well.

(I really hope you do this. I would read the hell out of it.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:22 AM on January 14, 2019 [3 favorites]