Has this happened to you? One of my current writing projects is a third story about April (see my sig for the current ones). I had something partly written and then let it lie. Today, I was reading an older story of mine for the first time in a while and discovered that a massage scene in that one was almost blow-by-blow the same as one I started to write for the new story. I am already flailing a bit with my erotic writing, finding I feel like I'm out of creative ideas when it comes to the sexy stuff. This just seems to confirm it. But maybe it's just a normal thing that happens to writers after they get enough stuff out over a period of time (ie. inadvertently doing a similar scene in a similar way in two different stories). Anyone else find they sometimes start unconsciously, completely unintentionally rewriting their old scenes in new stories?
While I've only PUBLISHED the one (actually two if you count the first one that Sheripie cowrote with me) I've written MANY others and yes, that CAN happen. The trick is to laugh it off and try to find a way to approach it from a DIFFERENT perspective. (Maybe send it to or just ASK a friend or two...what would YOU have him/her/them do NEXT?) Getting "in put" from others isn't cheating. ;) At least if all they give you is GENERAL DIRECTION. Which, as you well know, is entirely different than them writing an entire "scene" for you. Anyway, I hope my suggestion helps.
I think this is a common enough phenomenon, especially with erotic writing. I find it happens to me a lot, honestly, and I try not to get discouraged by it. Once I catch it, I'll either throw out the replicated material or try and sculpt it into something new. I'm a big proponent of authors recycling their existing work, sometimes even if that work is already published. Obviously, it's something I try to avoid when possible, but if you're aware of it, you can work with what you had before and make it into something new and better. As long as the new material is a dramatic improvement upon the idea and doesn't bear too great a similarity to its inspiration, I don't see a huge problem with revisiting the structural style of a previously successful scene.