“I think it’s an awesome idea that helps writers who are having a creative burnout find the drive to write something again.” – Tiny Scribe J
Congratulations to all the participants of my fourth annual September Kinky Scribble Challenge! While we can write kinky scribbles at any time of the year, it’s fun to try and make a collective effort like this. The goal of the event was to help people write and release stories quickly to help build confidence and reconnect with what excites us personally. It’s not a contest so much as an invitation to get curious about what we can create.
This year, 11 writers worked for 34.25 hours to write 14 different stories for an excellent total of 30,396 words! I’m always amazed how much we can write together. If we pulled these all into a single document, it would be the length of a novella! (That’s roughly the length of H.G. Wells’ sci-fi classic The Time Machine. We also grew our wordcount beyond Orwell’s Animal Farm and Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea. Source for fellow book nerds.)
And now for my favorite statistics, that just keep on growing: since the start of the community challenge in 2023, together we have written 142,572 words across 71 different stories!
These stories only exist because of our collective curiosity and courage, and I for one am damn proud of us all.
Participants
Please join me in celebrating and supporting these writers by reading their work and sharing it to your friends!
If you’re able, please follow them on social media and consider sending a tip, a Kofi, or subscribing to their Patreons. (Reminder: every time you take a second to leave a sincere comment of appreciation for a writer, a fairy gets off. Or something. I’m pretty sure that’s how it goes. (It also might be that when a writer gets positive feedback, it is the one thing that encourages them to keep trying.))
Each writer certified that their work is 100% human-made without the use of AI. The world of 2026 is rough out there for writers, artists, and musicians. Now more than ever, we must support the creative people in our community!
In alphabetical order by author:
- Anonymous, Pinky Promise, 925 words, 2 hours
- Brinbug, just a casual girls’ night, 2975 words, 3.5 hours
- Chuck Murnoe, A vanishing act with the Charming Charles, 1853 words, 1.25 hours
- Chuck Murnoe, Suitors in Glove, 1734 words, 1.25 hours
- drya, Receding From Sight, 1052 words, 2.5 hours
- Elle Largesse, An Erotic Unreality in a Fitting Room, 3574 words, 6.25 hours
- Harmony Schmelzenbach, Personal Assistance, 1491 words, 1.5 hours
- Lee, In Relatively Good Hands, 2166 words, 1.5 hours
- Malacoda, Amateur Entomology, 4725 words, 3.5 hours
- Minifriend, Conjured, 4700 words, 5 hours
- Quinn M., Retribution, 1146 words, 1 hours
- Quinn M., Apotheosis, 1365 words, 1.5 hours
- Quinn M., Cold One, 1803 words, 2 hours
- Tiny Scribe J, Power Play, 887 words, 1.5 hours
Don’t see your story listed here? This year I unveiled a new submission system with Google Forms, because algorithms and other issues were preventing me from seeing all the #SeptKinkyScribble entries out in the wild. The form is closed now, but I know most new systems take a while to figure out so I can open the form briefly for specific individuals if you wrote and posted your scribble during the month of September but missed the form.
You can comment below, message me on Bluesky or email me if you know of any stories that belong here. (Or if you spot any errors above.)
Reminder: this is not a contest and I have some hard limits due to past trauma, so I will not be reading all the stories. I have no way to vet all the authors or confirm the tags are correct. I will only include links to public stories, and stories that offer content tags. For accessibility and consent, if stories include themes from the Top 17 Content Tags and you are found to not have made an effort to tag them, I will take those down until you add tags at the start of the story. I reserve the right to not feature a story for any reason.
Thoughts from the writers
This year I was excited to be able to ask writers’ thoughts with my little submission form. I made sure to ask about whether or not people wanted to share their thoughts, and if they wanted anonymity, because privacy is such an important part of what allows us to be brave and creative in this kind of writing especially.
The comment that made the biggest impression on me was from our anonymous author, who gave permission to share. “I’m too shy and embarrassed to connect myself with kinky writing for the most part,” they wrote. “All throughout I honestly was on the verge of just deleting it and forgetting the entire thing. At a certain point though, it seemed like I might as well finish, and here we are. I don’t think I’ll ever post kink fic without making it anonymous or hiding behind an alias not connected with my typical online handle. But it’s nice to excise the idea from my head.”
I responded on Bluesky here but in case you’re not on that platform, I just want to say cheers to you and your bravery in writing and sharing your work! I remember what it’s like to be deeply shy with kink (and I still am, in some contexts). I lurked for years. It’s okay to need time and anonymity to decide if it’s right for you to join up. And it’s also okay to stay anonymous.
A lot of what I wrote about in my Hiatus How To resource also applies to the question “when will it feel safe enough to join a kink community?” Here is a link to the section with useful questions to ask yourself. They’re just meant to help you notice how you feel about different aspects of the kink scene.
Ok, more thoughts from this year’s writers! Here are some of the quotes from folks who agreed to let me share with attribution:
It’s incredibly helpful to get me out of my writer’s block and get back in touch with what I like to write for myself without pressure. I look forward to it every year! – Lee
This challenge has always been a good opportunity for people to show that a good, raw idea doesn’t always need to be so refined. We are afraid some of our ideas will be out there, but this challenge reminds us that they’re good ideas and they deserve to exist. We barely edit what we write, and is that bad? On the contrary, it shows how fast and well we can do, to let those scenarios out, to share them and let others enjoy what we’ve written. – Chuck Murnoe
Haven’t written any smut in so long, so thanks for this as a chance to finally break that years-long block! – Malacoda
“I think it’s an awesome idea that helps writers who are having a creative burnout find the drive to write something again.” – Tiny Scribe J
Success? Failure? Progress! A flowchart
Here’s a handy flow-chart for anyone who has complicated feelings about the outcome of this year’s September Kinky Scribble challenge. Spoiler: I’m proud of you no matter the outcome!
As I shared in my bluesky post with this: So far I have ended up in “column three” multiple times during this year’s challenge. While I’m frustrated that I wish I had more scribbles to share, I’m also happy at the same time, because I spent more time in a creative practice & I’ve got a good start on stories I’m excited to write when I have more space! WIN!
Curiosity & growth
I’ve been thinking a lot this year about curiosity.
In the tweet (thread post?) above by CancelTrev, they write, “bro OMFG, I just learned in neuroscience the brain physically grows new tissue in response to having genuine curiosity. So staying curious is not just a mindset. It’s literally how we expand.”
I’ve been working on how to stay curious for a lot of reasons, like the fact it helps a ton in relationships, in reducing the effects of bias, in trying to connect with people with different backgrounds than me. It also has an obvious correlation with creativity.
My favorite part of the excellent book What It Is by writer and comic artist Lynda Barry, comes where she’s asking herself if she can withstand two questions that haunt her whenever she tries to draw. I can’t find my notes on it, so I’m paraphrasing, but one is her asking “Is this any good?” and the other is “Does this suck?” You can see why this is paralyzing to the process of actually putting pen to paper. She found the answer in a third question: “Can I withstand not knowing long enough to finish this drawing?”
Bearing the uncertainty of “is this any good” and “does this suck” is part of any creative process. I think you can develop this with practice, just like stretching makes us more flexible and more repetitions can make us stronger. Bearing uncertainty becomes easier with time and a willingness to adapt. It’s an ongoing process, too, because even for the most talented writers and artists, there’s never a point where you answer that question once and for all, not if you want to keep on creating new things and experimenting and taking risks.
For me, part of that is shifting into a stance of curiosity. What can I make? Can I withstand the uncertainty? What happens if I just try? Just for a day, an hour, just the next five minutes? Somewhere along the way I get lost in the story itself, and that’s my favorite part of all, both as a writer and as a reader.
I highly recommend any of Lynda Barry’s books for creative folks, and have to tip my hat to Dr. Peregrine for introducing me to her work!
Congrats!
We made it through another year of scribbles! Life threw me multiple curve balls this year (I actually ended up moving during September!) but I figured out a way through the chaos and even have a plan to vote in November. The burning 20s are really something else, aren’t they? Last year I wrote an essay with resources for folks, Stay Strong, in which I shared one of my favorite new quotes:
Fight with the tools that are uniquely yours. — @RadicalEmprints
If your unique skills involve writing erotica and essay pep-talks to small niche communities online? Then that’s what you have to offer.
Pleasure is no small thing, my friends. We’ve got to remember the kind of world we want to live in, and build it now. I want to live in a world where people can explore eroticism and encourage each other to write and read stories for pleasure. So that’s what I’m doing here and now, and always.
As always, if you’d like a post-event creativity pep talk full of compassion, meant to help calibrate expectations, please enjoy one from Past Elle, which you can find at the end of the first 2023 celebratory post.
Thank y’all for joining me on this wild ride. I’m so proud of us all! Good job, everyone!
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