Blogging & Writing

Freelance Friday: Structure & Secret Readers

Kate Sloan

Freelance Friday is my recurring feature where I answer your questions about the odd blend of blogging, journalism, and copywriting that is my career. You can read more writing-related content in my Blogging & Writing section!

Q. How do you structure your day so that you stay productive? I feel like if I worked from home, I would sleep until noon, procrastinate on my work constantly, and take terrible care of myself.

A. This is usually one of the first things people ask me about when they find out I work from home. Most people have some experience with aimless, unscheduled days – whether during a bout of unemployment, a gap year, or just a holiday – so they know it can be a mind-numbing and even despairing reality. So, they wonder, how do I, and others in my position, manage to do it every day?

It’s a fair question. When I first eased into the telecommuting lifestyle, I did exactly the type of shit you’re describing here. I slept too late, stayed up too late, skipped meals or overate, left work til the last minute or did too much all at once. I was like a teenager whose parents have gone away for a week in Bermuda. It was, shall we say, not ideal.

What I’ve found helpful isn’t glamorous or sexy: it’s just rituals and routines. I’m a Taurus through and through, so it takes me a while to warm up to changes in my daily habits, but once I do, they tend to stick. While I love the freedom and flexibility of the freelance life, I also recognize that I need to impose some rules on myself if I’m going to get anything done.

My dayjob, blessedly, requires me to get up around 9AM every weekday. I am a sleepy person and I have seasonal depression; if I didn’t have a reason to get up in the morning, I likely wouldn’t until late in the afternoon – so thanks, dayjob! I usually do an hour or two of that work before getting dressed and heading out to a nearby café to work on blog stuff, podcast stuff, journalism stuff, or more dayjob stuff – whatever needs doing that day.

Cafés are a crucial part of my workflow, and I’m certainly not the first freelancer to feel that way. Whether it’s the caffeine, the noise level, or just the impetus to put pants on and join the real world, there is something about cafés that helps me power through work that might’ve felt impossible if I was sitting at home in my pajamas.

Over the past year or so, I’ve become more methodical about taking a proper lunch break, rather than just working through it like a fiend. I’ll buy or make something filling, and settle in with a book/podcast/TV show/YouTube video while I eat. I found I was more prone to burnout back when I would half-work through my lunch, so now I force myself to get out of “work mode” for a while when mid-day hits.

My major not-so-secret secret weapon for productivity is a to-do list. I make one in my Notes app every day, and cross things off as they get done. My partner has access to the list, and his supervision makes this tool even more potent. It’s simple as hell, but keeping a to-do list religiously has boosted my productivity a lot.

Lastly, while it’s important to build structures that help me do my best work, it’s also important to build structures that let me relax at the end of the day. Freelancers and other self-employed types – especially those prone to hypomania! – are notorious for never really “clocking out,” and as necessary as that sometimes seems, it’s not healthy. When I’m done my work for the day, I close all my work-related tabs and apps, shut my laptop, and physically walk away from it. Often I’ll unwind by smoking some weed, reading a book, listening to a funny podcast, and/or writing in my journal. Then I’ll typically eat a late dinner and call my partner around 10–10:30PM. Our end-of-day phone conversations provide a grounding conclusion to my day, keeping me focused on something that isn’t my inbox or my Twitter timeline, which always feels so needed after a full day of work.

Q. Has anyone you weren’t “out” to as a sex writer ever found your blog and confronted you? How did you handle that?

A. While I wasn’t always “out” as a sex writer, I’ve never really been embarrassed when someone read my writing who “wasn’t supposed to.” I always figure that if they’re offended by it, that’s on them, not me.

Of course, that isn’t true in every case. If I was writing cruelly or nonconsensually about someone, it would be reasonable for them to get upset about that. I’ve definitely done this in the past, but I’ve learned from my mistakes. Nowadays, usually the only people I roast on my blog without their express knowledge are people who’ve deeply hurt me – people who genuinely fucked up in some way. Anne Lamott says, “You own everything that happened to you… If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better,” and I believe that, to some extent. Someone who dumps me in a coldhearted way, or ghosts me, or leaks nudes of people I love, knows they’re being a dick when they do that, so I have few qualms about lampooning these people on my site – which they probably don’t even read, anyway.

The caveat is that I’m never unnecessarily cruel and I never identify people who don’t want to be identified. I wouldn’t write mean shit about a Tinder hookup’s dick size for no reason; I wouldn’t publicize an ex’s name, or describe their appearance in overly specific detail; I wouldn’t spill other people’s secrets or their deepest shames. It’s just not nice. I’m not saying I was always perfect on this front, but these are the standards I hold myself to now.

That said – yes, there have been times when I’ve discovered someone was reading my blog who I wish wouldn’t. For example: a dude who had, months earlier, lied and told me he was poly when he was actually monogamous, thereby making me unknowingly complicit in him cheating on his girlfriend. Or an ex who’d broken up with me in an especially explosive and scary way. Or a guy I’d stopped talking to after he crossed numerous boundaries. While I don’t necessarily begrudge these people reading my site, it is weird when they tell me they read it, especially if they do so as part of a half-assed apology or an unwarranted desire to “reconnect.” It feels like a boundary violation. If you are reading this post knowing full well that I probably wouldn’t want you to be here… perhaps think a little about why you’re doing that, what you’re getting out of it, and how it might make me feel if I knew.

I’ve been much better about getting partners’ consent to write about them and running relevant details by them before publishing, ever since a boyfriend told me, during a breakup, that I’d made him feel used for material. Those consent practices are important, but it’s also important for me to be able to write about shitty behavior when people are shitty to me. It grinds my gears when a partner or a hookup does something reprehensible and then says, “Don’t write about that on your blog” – because the implication is that they want to appear good and sweet to my readers, without actually being good and sweet to me. Fuck that. If they wanted me to write warmly about them, they indeed should have behaved better.

If you have questions for this series, you can leave them in a comment below, or email them to me!

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 11 Favorite Blog Posts

Kate Sloan

I wrote over 125 blog posts this year. It’ll be 137+ if you count this 12 Days of Girly Juice series. That’s 2.63 blog posts a week, for the whole year. Uhhh. I wasn’t joking when I said that sometimes my hypomania makes me more productive than is actually good for me…

Choosing my favorite 11 blog posts of the year was a tough task, but these are the ones I enjoyed working on the most and have loved looking back on since. They’re also, in many cases, some of the posts my readers seemed to resonate most with. Yay!

“Slow Burn“ was the first post I ever wrote about my Sir, back when he was just my crush, occasionally my Sir or my daddy, but not yet my boyfriend or my partner or my love. It featured – weirdly, and incomprehensibly to anyone who is not us – a photo of the room we were in when we kissed for the first time. It’s a “romantic screed” about wanting to fuck someone, but not being able to yet, and the ways that repeated recollection and rumination can re-write a memory into a legend. I sent this piece to Matt before publishing it, to make sure he was comfortable with it; he devoured it and replied immediately, “Wow wow wow, wow that’s good. I consent to all of it. A lot.” Later that night, on the phone, he asked if he could read it out loud to me, thus beginning what would become one of our most treasured traditions. Suffice it to say that this post holds an important place in my heart.

I wrote “Do You Want It Too?“ in the very early days of my relationship with Matt, when we were still negotiating, experimenting, and working out the kinks (so to speak) in our new D/s dynamic. I was amazed by how asking for something you want, sex-wise or kink-wise, can be incredibly vulnerable and scary, but tends to pay off if you’re doing it with a kind, open-hearted person. I wrote about some of the manifestations of that in our early courtship: cocktails, honorifics, iron pills, sadomasochism, makeup, and more. Our New Relationship Energy was amplified by the constant rediscovery that he, indeed, wanted what I wanted.

Next, predictably, we fell in love, and that’s what “How Did You Know You Were In Love?“ is about. I became obsessed with this question from the moment Matt texted me from a London hotel room to let me know he’d been Googling “love” and reading its Wikipedia page to try to figure out if it fit what he was feeling (what a nerd). We talked about how both of us had been in love a few times before but it was hard to know if that word also applied to our present feelings, simply because it all happened so quickly, so intensely, from a distance of 500 miles. But through much self-reflection – including writing this post – I eventually realized that yep, I was very much in love.

Matt’s fave thing I’ve written about him is “Little Girl Blue,” so I couldn’t leave it out. It was directly inspired by the first gift he ever bought me: a copy of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. Our relationship was haunted by the color blue, especially in its early days – a blue app, a blue button-down shirt, a blue book, a blue collar, blue cells in a spreadsheet, two gorgeous blue eyes. This is a post about how everything can seem beautiful and meaningful when you’re mired in new love – everything is heightened, from feelings to words to, yes, colors.

“8 Strategies For Taking More (Consensual) Pain“ was definitely my favorite how-to post I wrote all year. It highlights some of the cognitive, linguistic, and logistical methods I use to increase my masochistic limits in kink scenes. I hope folks found it useful!

I’ve long been captivated by the idea of revisiting emotionally significant locations from your past to imbue them with new meaning, and that’s what “This is the Place“ is about. I wrote about romantic interludes in playgrounds, parkettes, and parking garages – and what happened when I returned to those locales at less tumultuous times.

While I had previously written about our first date, I think “A Second Date in a Golden Room“ is my favorite thing I’ve written about a specific date with my Sir. It was definitely the most nervewracking date of my life, because of the amount of build-up that preceded it and hopes I had charged it with. I interwove the story of the date with excerpts from our actual texts that day, seeking to recreate the adrenaline high that seized me and wouldn’t let go. Peppermint tea and peppery pasta, a black velvet dress and a blue wool suit, a warm hand in mine and warm lips almost kissing me – these are some of my sense memories from one of my most exciting nights on this earth.

Matt and I collaborated on a lot of posts this year – most notably our Intimate Intercourse series of interviews – but I think my fave collab we worked on was “Cocks & Cocktails: Drink Pairings for Sex Toys.” I threw a bunch of sex toy names at him and then made frantic notes while he extemporized on which drinks best suited those toys. Synthesizing the brilliant thoughts of someone I love is always a fun challenge, and I love the way one of my interests and one of his came together to make this post.

Let’s get sappy… “10 Thoughts on a Long-Term Relationship Out of Left Field“ was my love letter to the whole idea of established, settled love, something I hadn’t really experienced for years. It wasn’t always my decision to end relationships so soon after beginning them, but nonetheless it still felt like my fault: the result of a personal failing, an embarrassing inability to sustain anyone’s interest. So, needless to say, I had a lot of Feelings about finally finding someone I wanted to stay with for a while, who wanted (and wants) to stay with me for a while too.

One of the most fun (yet most complicated) posts I worked on all year was “A Month’s Worth of Phone Sex,” which is exactly what it sounds like. I made scattered notes after every phone-sex sesh we had all month – which, as it turned out, totaled 19 times in 30 days – and then tried to write about them, though, as I’ve learned over and over in my years of being a sex writer, it’s very tricky to write about sexual encounters in a way that adequately translates the magic of them to someone reading from the outside. I did my best, though!

Finally: “When Your Partner Comes Out As Your Partner“ was definitely one of my most emotional and meaningful posts all year long. Reading it still makes me cry. Whoops.

What are your fave things you’ve read or written this year?

5 Tools I Use to Write About Past Experiences

Kate Sloan

You may have noticed that I write a lot of personal stuff. Stuff about my sex life. Stuff about my relationships. Even stuff about my childhood.

Friends reading my work often remark that I “must have a good memory” because I’m able to recall surprisingly specific details – like the exact wording of something a partner said to me, the exact outfit I wore to a particular event, or the exact number of seconds that elapsed between text messages.

It is probably true that I have a better-than-average memory for romantic and sexual events, developed due to a combination of obsessive anxiety, an intense passion for this subject matter, and plain ol’ practice. But I also have plenty of tricks up my sleeve that help me remember details when my brain didn’t cling onto them to begin with. Here are a few resources I rely on, that you might also find useful for your personal writing…

Journal entries. I’ve journaled regularly for over 10 years, as a means of coping with feelings, processing events, and identifying patterns. My journals aren’t exhaustive – I don’t write down every single thing I did on a given day, just what felt emotionally significant to me that day – so they’re not always good for cross-referencing minute details, but they are a good record of big emotional arcs in my life.

For example, the last time I thought I might be falling in love, I went back and looked at old journal entries from previous times I’d fallen in love. I wanted to check if the “symptoms” were similar, if the timelines matched up, etc. to see if my present-day feelings were really love or more like infatuation. Nerdy, right?

My journal entries tend to contain the details that really stood out to me about a particular event – so, maybe I don’t write down the name of the specific cocktail I drank on a great date, but I am likely to record stuff like how nervous I felt, what my date’s eyes looked like, and what they wore (if I liked their outfit!). These are all useful pieces of information for a blog post or essay later on.

The “advanced search” functions on Twitter and Flickr. Searching your tweets or your backlog of images is a breeze with these two services. I tweet and take photos far more often and more exhaustively than I journal, so I’ll often search my tweets or photos if I need a small, specific piece of information.

For example, if I know I tweeted 5 minutes before a date started and then again as I was leaving the date’s house later that night, I can check the timestamps on the tweets to figure out how long we were together. I often refer to Flickr if I need to know what I was wearing on a particular day, or other visual details like what a place looked like or what lipstick I wore.

If you use Google Chrome, you can set up custom search engines to make this process even quicker. I have the short-codes “TWT” and “FLI” set up in my Chrome for Twitter and Flickr, respectively. So if I want to find a tweet of mine containing the word “party,” say, I can just type “twt party” into my address bar and hit enter – or if I want to find a Flickr photo where I was carrying my Kate Spade purse, I can type “fli Kate Spade.” It makes information-hunting much more efficient, so I don’t lose the momentum of my writing!

Text message histories. The availability of this technique depends largely on your texting medium of choice. For example, Facebook Messenger’s search function is pretty good, while the Signal app doesn’t have a search function at all (and you lose all your texts if you delete the app!). iMessage’s built-in search function is pretty terrible – it’ll only show you one result for whatever word or phrase you enter – but can work if your search term is specific and unique enough. (e.g. I had no trouble finding the conversation I wanted to find when it contained the phrase “Daddy, per se.”)

If you are the type of person who texts a close friend (or a partner) immediately after anything notable happens, texts can be a great source for your initial impressions of events. For example, when I journaled about my first time having sex with a new partner in summer 2017, I wrote at length about how romantic and beautiful the encounter was… but my texts to Bex immediately upon leaving that date tell a slightly different story: “HE IS SUCH A DOMLY SERVICE TOP AND HIS DICK IS ASTONISHINGLY GOOD!!”

Selfies. Like many millennials, I take a lot of selfies. The timestamps on them can often provide useful information if I’m writing about a particular day/event, and I also like to check what I was wearing incase that’s a detail I want to mention.

Occasionally I plumb the depths of my selfies folder when I need more subtle info, like “How long did that boob bruise last?” or “How much did that blowjob smear my lipstick?”

My sex spreadsheet. Every year since 2016, I’ve debated whether I really need to keep a sex spreadsheet for another year, and I always come to the same conclusion: yes I do, because it’s indispensable when I’m writing about sexual encounters.

My journals, texts, and tweets only contain what felt significant to me at the time; they don’t always contain the logistical facts I might need when writing about a sexual interlude down the line, like “How many orgasms did I have on May 8th, 2017?” or “How many blowjobs did I give in October of last year?” or “What sex toys did I use most with partners last summer?” You never know what kinds of details you might want to reference in a piece of writing, so I like having the flat facts at my fingertips incase I need ’em.

What do you refer to when you’re writing about the past?

10 Ways to Love a Writer

Kate Sloan

1. Read their work. But like, really read it, though. Soak it up. Tell them what you liked about it. Tell them how it made you feel. Marvel at their clever word choices and melodious phrasing. If you haven’t had time to read their latest piece yet, say, “I’ve been saving it for when I can really take my time with it,” and mean that, and follow through.

2. Brag about them. When the subject of her last piece comes up at a dinner party, inquire, “Did you read her article about that? It was great!” When you introduce him to your friends, tell them, “He’s an incredibly talented writer.” Have her big-deal byline framed. Bring up his accomplishments in spaces where he might be too shy to do so himself. Be your sweetheart’s one-person hype machine.

3. Read their work aloud to them. Whether it’s an in-progress draft or an essay they wrote years ago, they’ll hear it differently in your voice. They’ll adore hearing which sentences surprise you, which metaphors make you giggle, which piece of dialogue trips you up. It’s a sort of artistic collaboration: their words, your voice, mingling to create something new.

4. Don’t offer edits unless asked to. If you’re not sure, ask before you begin to read, “What kind of feedback are you looking for on this, if any?” Sometimes they might want your detailed suggestions. Other times they might just want someone to look it over and say, “This is great!”

5. Nerd out about books with them. Be the person to whom they can text excerpts excitedly, or shriek gleefully about perfect sentences. Recommend them your favorites, and read theirs. Lie in bed together reading, taking occasional breaks to query, “What the fuck is this character doing?!” or “How the fuck is this going to end?!” Give them a gift certificate to their favorite used bookstore, or an annotated edition of their fave novel, or a shiny new Kindle. Hold them and kiss their shoulders while they devour something beautiful.

6. Let them bounce ideas off you. Help them shape the plot of their novel, or the arc of their essay, by listening and asking questions. Tell them what’s working for you and (gently) what isn’t. Point out plot holes or fallacies, and help them fill in the gaps. Develop the skill of being diplomatic but honest when asked, “Does this make sense?” or “Is this funny?” or “Is this any good?”

7. Write them love notes. Their love language is probably linguistic, so they’ll appreciate this even more than the average person. Put into words why you love them, what they mean to you, what they bring to your life. Tell them how their presence in your life heals your past, sweetens your present, and brightens your future. Write things that are meaningful, sweet, and true. Your prose doesn’t have to be flowery or crystalline like theirs is, though maybe they inspire you to make it moreso.

8. Surprise them with beautiful writing supplies. But ideally the ones you know they prefer, since that proves you truly know them. Get them their next journal, a box of exquisite pens or pencils, a year-long subscription to Evernote Premium or a domain for their blog… Whatever you know will get them fired up to write even more.

9. Give them space to write. Don’t take “I can’t; I’m writing” as a rejection; be flattered they trust you enough to be honest with you about their boundaries and needs. Don’t interrupt them when they’ve retired to a private space to write – or, if you must, ask first if it’s okay. Find ways to work on solitary pursuits, independently but together – they will feel adored and accepted when they see you can amuse yourself with some other activity while they write, happy just to be near them. They’ll be happy to be near you, too.

10. Give them things to write about. Magical experiences, poignant moments, deep and true love. Kiss them in pretty places, hold their hand in bustling streets, shoot them meaningful glances from across a room. Incite in them joy and lust and exhilaration and whatever feelings you’d want to read about – because they want to write about those feelings, but more than that, they want to feel them.

5 Ways to Fuck Up Your Social Media Strategy As a Sex Blogger

Kate Sloan

I’ve been a sex blogger for almost six years, and here’s what I know about social media: it can make or break you, both professionally and personally. I’ve built my audience through smart usage of Twitter, Instagram, and the like, but a good social media presence has also brought many additional blessings upon me: editors at big publications have discovered me through my social feeds, I’ve been offered jobs and gigs because of my tweets, and I’ve even met several partners (past and present) on Twitter. Isn’t the internet wild?!

Here are five disastrous mistakes you can make on social media that will damage your brand and your reputation as a sex blogger, sometimes irreversibly. I have made a few of these mistakes from time to time and have learned from making them, hopefully. Do not do these things!

Treat your followers badly. One of my cardinal rules in my social media strategy is to be generally pleasant to my followers – so long as they’re not being rude, inappropriate, or wilfully ignorant (in which case I sometimes call them out on that). If someone shares your work, compliments a post you wrote, or is otherwise a good and uplifting follower, you should make them feel appreciated for that. Building a strong, supportive community on social media can be done the same way you’d do that anywhere: by being kind and welcoming.

Be sex-negative. You would think sex bloggers wouldn’t need to be schooled on the importance of sex-positivity, but some of them do. I’ve seen many bloggers shame other people’s kinks, make moral judgments about other people’s harmless sexual decisions, mock certain types of porn, or dismiss certain fantasies as “gross” even if they exist only as fantasies. There’s a debate to be had about these things, sure, but I think outright shaming people who aren’t harming anyone with their sexuality is best avoided, especially if you work in the sexual sphere. No one is going to trust you to educate them on sexuality if you’ve made them feel bad about themselves as a sexual person, even if you had no idea you were doing that when you tweeted that vaguely shamey thing.

Be body-negative. Likewise, making fun of people’s bodies is not cool, especially in the sex-positive pockets of the sex industry where such missteps are particularly frowned upon. This includes stuff like fat-shaming, ableism, penis size-shaming, and so on. If you’re making fun of a particular physical trait or condition, odds are, you’re hurting the feelings of someone who reads what you write. Don’t do it!

Buy fake likes and followers. People can tell when you buy artificial likes for your Facebook page or beef up your Instagram numbers with false followers. It’s not a good look. Building your audience is a slow process, but if you’ve done your research on blogging, you already know it isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. So take the time to do it properly. Your audience will trust you more as a result.

Be inauthentic. I honestly think the #1 thing that’s helped me in my social media strategy is being real. I put my actual insecurities, fears, and weirdnesses out into the world, and it establishes a feeling of camaraderie between my followers and I. And crucially, that camaraderie is real, not just something I “put on” to achieve certain professional goals. I treasure my troupe of Twitter weirdos, and the reason many of them are so invested in me and my writing is that I show them a lot of me – the real me. It’s freeing to be so open, and to be accepted in all your strangeness!

Bloggers and blog readers alike: what do you think is most important in a sex blogger’s social media strategy?

 

Heads up: this post was sponsored, and as always, all writing and opinions are my own.