On the 1st January 2010 I started a blog. I was writing quite a bit of erotic fiction at the time but struggled with self discipline and getting them finished. I thought if I started a blog it would help. Amazingly it did. I wrote that blog for 15 years. My work was published in a number of anthologies and featured in an audio porn project but that blog also changed my life in numerous ways that I could never have foreseen.
I discovered a whole community of like minded creatives, people writing about sex, bodies, gender, love, kink, non-monogamy. I also discovered people, particularly women who were expressing themselves using their camera. It inspired me and turned me into a self portrait photographer.
It also led me to a whole new career. Writing content, building websites, and running a large industry conference.
I learned so much about myself writing that blog. It was a place for me to explore my thoughts about all sorts of subjects but in particularly my body, my sexuality, my desires. I also made incredible friends and partners found myself a part of a truly amazing community of people.
Sex blogging and adult content creation was thriving. It had really started to grow in the noughties but continued to expand and evolve all through the 2010’s. There were so many content creators, from bloggers to those using YouTube and podcasts. The conference I ran drew people from all over the world. It was a brilliant event bringing together such a broad spectrum of creators from romance/spicy authors to sex workers, independent female porn creators, sex bloggers, sex toy reviewers and sex educators all alongside sex toy companies.
Sadly Covid came along and followed swiftly afterwards by the Online Safety Bill and the whole landscape changed.
I carried on creating but I felt a bit lost. Having to block my blog to all UK traffic was one of the saddest days of my creative life. It was not the writing but the naked pictures (of which I am hugely proud and not remotely ashamed of) that meant I had to block it to UK traffic or implement an age verification technology. That was not something I had the budget for and so I was left with no choice and in the end I stopped blogging. After 15 years of writing and posting at least twice a week I felt completely defeated.
I have not written creatively, (I still write for my job and also my daily diary) in nearly 2 years. I have had moments where I have thought I had completely lost the ability to writing like that. I have tried, sat here looking at this blank screen, but nothing. Just a blank screen and a broken heart. That might sound dramatic but honestly it has been a massive loss in my life and I have mourned it but also I seemed completely unable to do it any more. How does that happen? Where did it go? Who even was that women I called me? How do I get her back?
I do now know the answer to that last one. I can’t get her back. She was then and I am now and the only way is to move forward. It was that knowledge which made me think that what I might need is a new space for a new era of me so here we are.
What are my plans for here?
Good question. Like my first blog I don’t have many. Write what I want to write. I have plans for fiction but also I am going to include all my book reviews too. I also want to bring some of writing across from my other blog. There are pieces on there, fiction and non-fiction that I am really proud of and deserve to be seen and read. I want to write more about menopause, bodies, non-monogamy but also about reading, books and writing. Basically, we shall see where the mood takes me. It worked before, hopefully it will work again.
Wish me luck
A