Erotica:

A nice swath of manicured lawn between the clouds, castles and heroes on white steeds, and the smoldering badlands of sharp edges, STD's and sweaty, smelly bodies slapping against each other at random.

It's a difficult arena. There are only so many words to describe a penis. Only so many ways to describe the sounds one makes, the noises created by the bodies as they collide. The feelings, the emotions.

I recently completed a collection of erotic short stories, all written over the course of a year or so. As separate stories, they were passable, but once I put them all together as a collection, the similarities became obvious. It was a difficult barrier to break. I became hyper-sensitive to the words and phrases that repeated in every story. Stories with which I had been pleased became stale and tedious when placed next to one another.

After a period of berating and self doubt, I took a step back and looked at the collection as a whole. It wasn't a matter of replacing a word here and a phrase there. There was more to it than that. I realized that I was writing stories. I was creating characters. Each character had their own view of the world, their own take on situations and sexual acts.

Once I got past my point of view and let the characters tell the tale, things were a little bit easier. I'm not saying I completely solved the problem - the similarities are still apparent from story to story, at least to me. But I chalk that up to voice and style. Regardless of the characters and genre, I'm still the author, and it's still my voice telling the story.

That is not to say that I'll always tell the same story, for that is something else entirely. But every author has a unique flavor, and that flavor is what appeals to/repels a reader.

Was I successful? In my opinion, sure. In the readers' opinions? Well, that remains to be seen.