ROUGH DRAFT CONFESSIONS: NOT a guide to WRITING & selling EROTICA & romance but full of inside insight anyway is now available on:
ebooks
iBooks ❤ Kobo ❤ Amazon ❤ Barnes & Noble ❤ Google Play
softcovers
Chapters ❤ Amazon ❤ Barnes & Noble ❤ Powell’s Books ❤ Book Depository … and all sorts of other places
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Hello, kittens. If you already have a copy of ROUGH DRAFT CONFESSIONS: NOT a guide to WRITING & selling EROTICA & romance but full of inside insight anyway, or the original CvP edition, you’re probably here looking for the index. Yeah? Click here:
CVP / RDC Index (coming! almost done!)
If you already have a copy of either CUNT versus PUSSY or ROUGH DRAFT CONFESSIONS, you don’t really need the other book. The relevant content is identical, and the changes minor. The major difference is that RDC is all non-fiction and does not contain any of the sexually explicit teasers included in CVP. And, it has a cover and title that won’t raise eyebrows if you leave it around the house.
You: Yeah, what the hell were you thinking?
Me: Um… I kind of wanted to be very blunt about what I do… and what I expect from my target audience. What? You think it’s too much?
You: I’m reeling, a little.
Well, now you can buy a copy with a clean cover. Although, I think you should buy CUNT versus PUSSY. Because reclaiming taboo words in a positive way is important.
You: Yeah, yeah. That’s your obsession, not mine. So. Tell me. What is it about?
Me: I thought you’d never ask! Here, I wrote this blurb:
A coming out story and a personal-and-professional manifesto about why it’s important to write filthy, dirty books—and, also, to read them—CUNT versus PUSSY explores the power of words, the limitations of genre, the need to create, and the business of writing.
Subverting conventions of memoir and ‘truth’ from the first chapter/confession (‘I’m writing for you, but I’m a liar’), CUNT versus PUSSY refuses to be an instructional manual (‘What do you mean, you want instructions?’), connects readers to creative resources in off-the-wall ways (‘He had a teenie weenie penis, and that’s why you should read Anne Lamott’), examines the absurdities of publishing convention (‘I need a blurb but divorce is a buzz kill’), and leaves you vibrating with the desire to fall in love, have some out-of-this-world sex on a mountaintop, reclaim the word ‘cunt’ in your private thought crimes and public conversations… and make some sexy art of your own in the process.
The faux memoir’s ‘very useful’ appendix includes teasers/samples of m jane colette’s work-in-progress, including the first chapter from the genre-defying novel (the) Consequences (of defensive adultery), the provocative essay ‘Why it’s important to write—and read—romance and erotica in an age of plentiful porn,’ and a reading list designed to change your life.
CVP ebook: BUY on KOBO ❤ BUY on AMAZON
DARE TO LEAVE A HARD COPY AROUND THE HOUSE?
CHAPTERS/INDIGO ❤ AMAZON ❤ POWELL’S BOOKS ❤ BARNES & NOBLE ❤ BOOK DEPOSITORY… other places too: check your fave retailer
Want a free e-copy of CUNT versus PUSSY? Yours to discretely read on the e-reader of your choice if you sign up for my ROUGH DRAFT CONFESSIONS newsletters.
Coming soon: CVP/RDC Evolving Index
Coming soon: CVP/RDC Reading List
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TABLE OF CONTENTS, expanded
Part 1: CUNT versus PUSSY / THE CONFESSIONS
- MANAGING EXPECTATIONS: I’m writing for YOU but I’m a liar
- CONFESSION 1: So I write this dirty, dirty book…
- FIRST INTERRUPTION: Whoa, whoa, whoa…
- CONFESSION 2: You tell me the title really sucks
- CONFESSION 3: And then, I get hit by a truck (it’s a metaphor)
- CONFESSION 4: Six days crafting a five sentence bio
- DIGRESSION: Irving Layton on poetry, orgasms, and academics
- CONFESSION 5: The first pitch
- FOR THE RECORD: A bad synopsis can be a decent pitch
- AN INSIGHT: J. Jack Halberstam on why it’s important to write stories that don’t end with the cum shot
- CONFESSION 6: Mail it out, throw up—repeat
- CONFESSION 7: OMFG she knows a publisher?
- CONFESSION 8: Cock tease—or, I don’t get an agent
- CONFESSION 9: Rejection blows goats
- THIS EXPLAINS A LOT: Erica Jong on the writer’s ‘fuck you’ impulse
- CONFESSION 10: ‘If at first you don’t succeed, maybe you shouldn’t try sky diving’
- CONFESSION 11: I fall in love by the river and stop being crazy
- IMAGINE THIS: Susan Sontag and Ernest Hemingway in a conversation about sex (and writing)
- CONFESSION 12: The results of five (actually, two) hours of research
- QUESTION: Was Sigmund Freud a Gemini?
- CONFESSION 13: How NOT to write a synopsis
- FUCK, YEAH: Breaking rules works
- CONFESSION 14: ‘So… may I see some more?’
- CONFESSION 15: I come on a mountain, literally
- INDULGE ME: I really want you to read his entire ‘I Want You’ email, ok?
- SOCIAL REALIST EROTICA: a collaborative definition from Julia Cameron and me
- CONFESSION 16: My excessive attachment to the word ‘cunt’
- CONFESSION 17: A really bad contract
- CONFESSION 18: I can’t find any typos
- INDULGE ME AGAIN: He likes it, he still really, really likes ME!
- CONFESSION 19: I almost forgot to tell you about her (my) name…
- CONFESSION 20: I’m not real
- CONFESSION 21: I’m not real… but I can create myself—and also, let me fucking whine, Dad!
- QUESTION: Wait. What happened to that woman…
- CONFESSION 22: Rantings of a Mad Girl turned into a business plan (sort of)
- CONFESSION 23: I have no vision
- ON SECOND THOUGHT: Maybe Sylvia Plath shouldn’t be my role model
- A COMPLAINT: ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa!’
- CONFESSION 24: OMFG not another creative visualization
- INTERJECTION: Art, sex, imagination
- CONFESSION 25: ‘Do you wanna shoot some porn for me?’
- AN UNREMARKABLE MILESTONE: M. Jane Colette’s first blog post
- TORMENTING THE EDITOR: Periods are over-rated; also, most people sext with one hand, not two
- TORMENTING THE COPY EDITOR: Hyphenating ‘g-spot’ and other ways to make a grown man cry
- CONFESSION 26: My parents still love me, although they’d love me more if I had written something they could show to their friends
- DRAFTS, DRAFTS & RE-DRAFTS: I need a blurb but divorce is a buzz kill
- AN OBJECTION & A MYSTERY: Leslie McIntyre on having it all
- CONFESSION 27: I think this is what they mean by ‘dialectics’
- FLASHBACK: This part is totally true
- CONFESSION 28: A picture is worth a 1000 words
- A CLARIFICATION: She’s a fuckslave, he likes to be called master, but I do not write stereotypical BDSM scenes with blindfolds and handcuffs, thank you very much
- CONFESSION 29: I will never forget…
- CONFESSION 30: The way to hell is paved with the best intentions
- QUESTION: Isn’t it their job to sell it?
- CONFESSION 31: Instead of really preparing myself for the launch, I wrap myself in Persian Poetry
- CONFESSION 32: The book’s coming out tomorrow, and I am going mad
- CONFESSION 33: I am a writer. Today, finally, I am a REAL writer…
- THIS REALLY HAPPENS: How do you criticize someone’s sexual fantasies, exactly?
- CONFESSION 34: Squirming with embarrassment, and not at what you might think…
- An Interlude For An Orgasm
- CONFESSION 35: And then, everything falls apart
- Pause
- A CONSULTATION WITH THOMAS WOLFE: But surely there’s a purpose to all this
- CONFESSION 36: Wait, I lied
- LESSON: He had a teenie weenie penis, and that’s why you should read Anne Lamott
- CONFESSION 37: I’d really like someone to blame, but…
- PLEASE PASS THE CHAMPAGNE: He loves me! He loves me again!
- WAIT—you’ve never really explained the difference between cunt and pussy!
- CONFESSION 38: I fuck off to Cuba and write another book
- QUESTION: Do you think this is true?
- CONFESSION 39: I come back from Cuba and have an identity crisis
- THEN THIS HAPPENS: Let us make one thing easier for you
- FOR THE LAST TIME: Reading Sylvia Plath when you’re existentially angsting is a TERRIBLE idea
- CONFESSION 40: I decide to do nothing
- CONFESSION 41: Doing nothing sucks ass
- CONFESSION 42: Doing nothing sucks ass 2
- SOS: When all else fails, consult Cheryl Strayed
- CONFESSION 43: I don’t have a fucking clue how to do that
- SOS 2: Steve Jobs gives me some advice on being naked… and dead
- CONFESSION 44: I hate writers
- INTERLUDE: Why we like having sex with artists
- ANOTHER INTERRUPTION: What do you mean you want instructions?
- CONFESSION 45: You know what I just realized? This is also my coming out monologue
- CONFESSION 46: So then I go to this conference…
- BY THE WAY: Gloria Steinem told me…
- CONFESSION 47: Maybe there was something in the water
- CONFESSION 48: In conclusion, cunt is a beautiful word
an interjection for an INVITATION
Part 2: TEASERS (omitted in Rough Draft Confessions)
- TEASER: The Photograph (included in print copy of RDC, but not in e-copy)
- TEASER: A Walk In The Woods
- TEASER: Molly Jones
- TEASER: Text Me, Cupid
- TEASER: What puts you in the mood to fuck?
- BONUS: Writing romance and erotica in an age of plentiful porn—it’s how we change the world
Part 3: A VERY USEFUL APPENDIX
- USEFUL THING 1: Priorities, baby, priorities—or, ‘I don’t’ as an answer to ‘How do you do it all?’
- USEFUL THING 2: Meditation for writers, ‘Mom! I need you!’ and struggling to stay on that tightrope
- USEFUL THING 3: 10 Surefire Ways to Achieve World Peace, Eternal Happiness, and Total Creative Fulfillment By Friday
- USEFUL THING 4: Resources, references, and all the links compiled in one place
EPILOGUE: Math sucks, but it doesn’t matter
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Evolution of a bio