My Year of Smut – A Reflection

On the heels of earning second place in 2019’s Smut Marathon, I’ve been asked to write a reflection about my experience with the competition. And now, with unabashed flouting of that pesky writing rule, I’m going to spoil the ending…

I’m officially naming 2019 my Year of Smut!

Admittedly, it took me a while to get there.

When the results of the last round were released a few weeks ago, I woke early and ignored my phone. There were bound to be Twitter notifications about the results on my lock screen. Instead, I grabbed my iPad and navigated directly to the site. When I read that I’d placed second, I blinked and turned off the screen. I searched my feelings and found…numbness. 

A few minutes later, I sat alone in my living room sipping coffee and wondered why the wave of pride and excitement I’d expected to feel at placing in the top three wasn’t coming. Given my competitive nature, I chalked it up to being a bit bummed that I missed first place by less than one point. But as the minutes ticked away, that just didn’t feel right to me. 

When the congratulations came from my friends later, I endeavored to muster the requisite enthusiasm. They’d been my biggest cheerleaders and more than one of them was puzzled by my seemingly lackluster attitude regarding my accomplishment. I confessed that I was, honestly, just as perplexed. 

As the days wore on, I started and stopped writing this reflection many times. Everything I wrote felt disingenuous. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone who might read this looking for motivation to enter the marathon. It began to feel like a task that I just couldn’t complete. Then, a friend reminded me of some advice she’d given me when I was deep in the feels of being an imposter and staring at a blank page. “Write for you,” she’d said. “Fuck what other people will think. Make this about you and what you’d want to read.”

So here it is. What I’d want to read. Real talk. 

The truth is that this competition was hard for me. I have a full-time career, myriad volunteer commitments, a chronic illness, two kids with impossible schedules (one with special needs), and I generally find it difficult to say “no” to most anyone in need of my time and resources. I could easily title this post “My Year of Compassion Fatigue.” Yet, I somehow found a way to make it through ten rounds and nab a gorgeous silver dildo (among other great swag). But how? 

The answer I came up with was that I did it because, without even realizing it, I chose me. And that’s significant. 

I chose to say “no” to some of the non-essential demands on my time – foregoing my previous inability and unwillingness to decline the requests – solely so I could write. I chose not to feel guilty about stealing moments between tasks at work to edit my stories. I chose to get home just a little bit later so that I could sit at a coffee shop after work and agonize over word choice and plot. I chose to push myself through periods of intense anxiety, crushing heartbreak, and significant family challenges to write anyway, even when I felt nowhere near sexy. I chose to neglect sleep in favor of reworking an entire storyline right before the deadline, continuously wondering — is this good enough? Sometimes, I chose me and (drumroll, please) the world didn’t fall any further apart around me.

The Smut Marathon is a year-long writing competition comprised of ten elimination rounds, strict rules, hard deadlines, nearly impossible word limits, and challenging story prompts. Throwing myself into that race was the biggest risk I’d ever taken with my writing. I was opening myself up to public critique and the perpetual feeling that I was fooling myself if I thought I’d make it to the end. But I still wanted to do it. As it turns out, I needed to do it. 

Hitting “send” on each submission made me feel alive and intentional. Each time I advanced, I was emboldened by the feeling and I wanted more of it. It felt like I was giving a fuck about myself and what I wanted to accomplish. But, there was more to it than that. The more I wrote about sex, the more I thought about sex. The more I thought about sex, the more I wanted to experience sexy things. This is not to say I was some withering, repressed wallflower before that, but there was so much more I wanted to do. And I did many of them. 

My Year of Smut became subtitled my year of naughty adventures!

It was marked by such highlights as going to my first invite-only, real-deal sex party and brazenly flashing my boobs on stage at a male revue. I attended two sex expos where I rode a Sybian, was Florentine flogged, and paddled on a Saint Andrews Cross — all in public. I discovered that I loved the submission of being tied up and suspended in Kinbaku/Shibari and confessed my kinky secrets to chatty Uber drivers in multiple states. I confronted the situational anorgasmia that plagues me and hired an online sex worker to advise me about it. Most significantly, I experienced my first internal G-spot orgasm this year…something I had convinced myself I wasn’t capable of.

Turns out that by choosing me and choosing to stick with a task as difficult for me as the Smut Marathon, I reconnected with myself, my sexual consciousness, and my desires in ways I hadn’t done before. I gave myself permission to seek out my joys. 

Moreover, competing in the Smut Marathon made my writing better! The prompts and word limits gave me a much-needed push beyond my writing comfort zones. Feedback, both good and critical, helped me to refine my style and find my voice. Reading the entries from so many talented writers fed my competitive streak. All of the sex toys that are awarded for placing second are a huge plus, not to mention the ticket to Eroticon that has this wanderluster tracking flights to London on a daily basis. Inclusion of my story in the competition’s anthology, slated to be published next year, is a secret, life-long dream come true.

So, I asked myself again, why did I feel numb despite winning second place? 

This is where I landed: my Year of Smut was coming to an end and I had no idea what was coming next in many domains of my life – love, career, family. I defaulted to numbness to shield myself from my fear of the unknown. I wasn’t giving myself permission to feel genuine happiness. It felt shameful to do so in the midst of the significant emotional and physical challenges simultaneously happening in my life and in the lives of my most loved ones. I’ve always hated ambiguity and I hate endings even more. Once I figured that out, I began to lean into better feelings — the pride of accomplishment; the luxury of having devoted so much time to writing; the delicious mischief of having indulged in sexy thoughts and actions; and the realization that life’s challenges don’t tell the entire story of who I am or who I want to be. That’s when a path began to emerge.

And, here it is…

This blog and entering the Smut Marathon again for 2020! Working on my writing and sharing it with others is what I’d miss most from my Year of Smut. These were the sparks that compelled me to keep going and to explore more of myself. I liked being that woman. I want to love that woman. I’m beginning to learn that choosing her isn’t confined to time or space or deadlines. It’s a state of mind that I plan to make stick.

If you’re thinking of entering next year’s Smut Marathon, but are waffling, I’ll end with this: my hands may still have hesitated when I defined myself as a “writer” in my tagline, but I did it anyway. I’m leaving 2019 behind with a heavy heart and many unknowns in my life, but I’ll push on anyway. You’ll never know where the choice to be vulnerable and take a risk may lead you, but you may just find that a year of smut is exactly what you need. For your writing. And for all of its joys.

Many thanks to Marie Rebelle, the organizer of the Smut Marathon, and to all of the judges and members of the public who voted. Extra special thanks to D for never letting me give up, and to J, C, and T for believing in me.