Curry Zawa Kaoru's Creative Counseling - “I can't stop writing erotic fanfic.” There are so many ways to love your favorite characters and they're all valid.

My standard for each piece of writing is 2,000 characters, but I usually run out of things to say around the 1,200-character mark. In fact, for this column, I have a special rule: As long as it exceeds 2,000 characters—including the reader’s letter—it’s fine.

In other characters, the longer the reader’s letter, the better, so please keep veering off on tangents when you write in!

There are people out there who barely manage to write 2,000 characters with a little help from others and then feel like they finished a big job. So even if there’s a torrent of 15,000 characters of smut waiting in the second half, it's still an achievement that you've managed to write 15,000 characters of non-erotic fanfic.

Also, I don’t think many people look at someone who’s written 30,000-plus characters and think you're doing nothing but sexualizing the characters. Anyone who does should know there are more efficient ways to do that.

For those of us—myself included—who love erotic content but can’t write it ourselves, there's no such thing as too many smut fics. Not to sound like a fat-fetishist, codependent boyfriend who shoves pizza into his girlfriend’s mouth while she’s trying to lose weight, but you're wonderful just the way you are. However, if you have a vision of who you want to be, no matter what others say, you should give it a go.

However, I’m not entirely sure what your reason for wanting to write wholesome stories is.

Personally, I’m someone who wants to write slightly risqué romantic comedies but can’t, and I’m struggling with it—but to be honest, there are about 300 million other genres I can’t write either. 

So why am I only worried about not being able to write romantic comedies? It’s because that genre is, without a doubt, my absolute favorite. When I read romantic comedies written by others, I feel a strong urge to write something like it too and I dream of making readers so moved that they want to bang their fists on the table.

That’s exactly why I’m so deeply disappointed and troubled by the fact that I can’t write them myself. And that the reason I can’t is ridiculous… I’m simply too embarrassed.

In your case, while you probably like wholesome stories too, it doesn’t seem like you prefer wholesome stories over erotic ones and want to write those instead. Or rather, even as you say you’re getting off track, you’ve already said the most important part: “I like it when they come together after many twists and turns, spiritually and physically.”

For someone like you who loves writing stories that connect both heart and body, a story that focuses solely on the heart would leave you with an incomplete sense of satisfaction. So it’s only natural that you can’t stop halfway through and end up pouring it all out—and in fact, from a health perspective, that’s actually the right thing to do.

I get the feeling that rather than wanting to write wholesome works, you’ve gotten stuck on the idea that you have to be able to write wholesome stories as an obligation.

You’re looking down on yourself too much for only being able to write erotic fiction, and perhaps underlying that is the belief that eroticism is a bad thing.

It’s true that even in real-life romance, the idea that a purely physical relationship is bad and doesn’t count as true love is deeply ingrained within us.

If you force that logic into the world of fan fiction, it implies that someone who only writes about physical relationships can’t truly love that pairing. This might lead to an overly complicated mindset where you feel you must be able to write wholesome stories to prove your love for the ship.

However, there’s no doubt that both the body and the mindset are part of a person.

If you argue that a relationship based on only a partial connection is bad, then relationships based solely on feelings would be unhealthy too—yet those are, on the contrary, revered as pure love. I’ve never seen a woman slap someone while shouting, “You were just after my heart anyway!”

Since fictional characters allow for far more freedom and diversity than real-life relationships, rather than forcing yourself to be pure, I think you'll have an easier time of it if you have confidence in your own way of loving your OTP. Why not go ahead and keep throwing your favorite couple into steamy situations all the time?

However, people tend to worry more about what they can’t do than what they can, and if writing more wholesome fanfiction boosts your self-esteem, helps you approach artists who draw your favorite pair without hesitation, and might even make you grow taller, then maybe it’s better to learn how.

As for how to do it, I feel that in the end, the only way to turn something you can’t do into something you can is through repeated practice.

It’s not about figuring out how to do it; what’s important is to keep challenging yourself with wholesome fanfiction with the mindset that if you keep writing until you can do it, you’ll eventually get there.

It probably won’t go well right away, but as long as you don’t give up, you might eventually be able to write a story where two people who used to have sex four seconds after meeting can proudly return home well-rested from a hotel room with two full-sized beds.

Even if you keep failing, you’ll end up with a massive collection of erotic works, so it’s not a waste of time. If you publish them, there will be people who enjoy them.

It’s a truly efficient, SDG-friendly challenge. There’s no reason not to do it.