Perils of writing stories

From your (self-appointed) Johannesburg correspondent:
There's actually a second typo in that quote as it should read "Witwatersrand Rifles/De La Rey Regiment. Koos de la Rey, was a South African military officer who served as a Boer general during the Second Boer War. I'm sure Koos would have hated people to think that he was originally from Peckham

Yes I spotted that at the time having read a number of books on the Anglo-Boer war and visited a couple of the battle sites some years back.

In the book they also refer to an Afrikaner police officer called Andries as 'Andy' when it would most likely be 'Dries'.

Brosse6

If you are interested in South African history, this might amuse you.

An avenue in Afrikaans is a Laan and a drive is a Rylaan. A street in the town of Potchefstroom was re-named Mandela Rylaan. Somebody (undoubtedly an Afrikaner) blacked out some of the letters on the street sign and it read De la Ry Laan much to the annoyance of the ANC controlled city council. Ry and Rey are pronounced in the same way (like the English 'ray') in Afrikaans

Apologies for being totally off topic.

I would never have considered a typo or even a mistake of a different kind as a "peril" of writing. I'd be more inclined to see carpal tunnel as one.

And, since the folks here write spanking stories, perhaps in our collective case, "field research" might be a peril to some. (Possibly an answered prayer to others )

When I saw the title of this thread I was thinking about a different type of peril all together, the peril of being outed as a writer of spanking stories, and how your friends/family would react to that revelation.

One of the things that has always made me nervous about writing stories, and I do have a bunch of ideas in my head, is getting found out by friends/family. While not as "taboo" as it once was spanking, especially of younger characters, can be seen as deviant by many, and I know of at least one case where a spanking actor or actress was outed in front of his/her family and it ended many of the relationships.

I don't know how my friends would react to me being interested in things like this, but I know my family would not take it well... at all, and having them discover that I am both interested in reading and, almost more importantly, writing stories like this is something of a fear. Thankfully they don't have access to my computer, and I do my best to make sure that whenever I am writing anything (what I write currently is primarily for my own enjoyment, and to just see if I can do it), I make sure it is either late at night, or when no one else is around to somehow see my screen.

How do others feel about this? I know from the descriptions of some authors their significant others are aware of their writing, and some even encourage it, though I do not know if their families know about their writings, but for those where this is more private, are you also afraid of how your families/friends would react should your status as an author come out?

Note, this is not to shame anyone, I immensely enjoy reading the stories on this site, and I also enjoy my own private writings, but I do also worry about someone seeing my writing, and how they would react.

I too write mainly for myself but am also afraid of being outed to my family, friends, co-workers. If one were to find out by this site then that's a different story because that would indicate that they too were "one of us".