Max Sebastian recently directed me to an interesting blog titled Intimate Thoughts of a Married Man. The blog’s author, “slider”, is a married man who harbors a fantasy of watching (or at least sharing) his wife with other men (you can read my thoughts on this subject here). It was started in April of 2010 and it’s still active, although just barely. I started to read it to get another perspective on the inner conflicts of a man with this fantasy–think of it as research for future books like Just Watch Me or Leap. I ended up getting hooked.

Slider chronicles his story over three years, writing post after post–many of which are mundane recounts of this guy’s life with his seemingly conservative, certainly beautiful, wife–and sharing with us a glimpse into a real couple’s life, filled with real problems and sometimes hard emotions.

I understand that other blogs have been wildly successful using this formula. Belle de Jour comes to mind, of course, but there are hundreds of others (even on wife-watching, as I soon found out after poking around). Due to the nature of a blog post, you can get away with a lot more than you can in traditional fiction. You can tell more, show less. You don’t have to set up scenes. Characters emerge like overheard conversations, not direct lines of description. Any one post might not hold the same power as a short story or the chapter of a book, but taken as a whole, a blog narrative can create an intimacy that is profound. These people become our friends. Their families become our families. And as a writer, that makes me envious.

I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a novel using a blog structure. I may still, but I’m not sure that my readers would forgive the sparsity of language and the lack of description that goes with that medium (although I could certainly embellish). I’m also not sure how much it would translate to free-flowing lines of text, as opposed to individual posts you must click through to progress the timeline. I’ve also toyed with turning this blog into more of a recount of what it’s like to be an erotica author in a pretty judgmental world. That seems more doable, although not as interesting.

Enough rambling in the early hours of Sunday morning. Have a great day, everyone. If you’re interested in wife-sharing genre (commonly referred to “hotwife,” or getting into some very detailed and thought-provoking inner dialogues of a man with this fantasy, definitely check out the blog. Both the link above the link down below go to the very first post, so you can avoid spoilers. I’d also recommend trying to avoid looking at the “Popular Posts” sidebar as those are pretty damn spoilery, too.

Recommended read: Intimate Thoughts of a Married Man