Divisions and Precisions

Sex and the Single Writer

As I told Dawn in an email earlier today, the muse has bitten me in the ass once more. I'm suddenly on fire with ideas of things to write and say. I'm considering another book for Tribe 8, similar in style to my last one. I have an idea for an honest-to-god novel, if I can ever tie myself to a chair to work on it. I'm doing a lot of writing for my MUSH. Brand has recruited me to help with a proposal for a second T8 book.

So naturally, this morning I started a story. Sleep deprivation will do marvelous things to people. I should mention, I was up talking (and roleplaying) with Brand until about 7:30 this morning. At that point, knowing I had to be at work at 9, I went to lay down for about fifteen minutes or so. No good. As I lay there, thoughts drifting, an idea showed up and clobbered me right between the eyeballs. CLONK. I dunno, maybe it fell from the ceiling or something.

So I sat down and wrote about a page before getting dressed and coming to work. I had to. I debated it. I'd have to skip a shower to write. But I knew if I didn't sit down and start writing right then, the core of the idea would fade, and by the time I got home tonight, it wouldn't seem so important anymore, and it would never get written. It's happened to me before.

Normally, I would have emailed the story off to myself at work and spent most of today working on it as well. I... can't do that with this story. It's one of my rare (read: the last time I wrote a story like this was five years ago) attempts at out-and-out erotica. Not exactly something you want the boss reading over your shoulder. or as you type it, if your boss is a fascist with one of those keystroke-monitoring programs. (Note: if you're reading this as I type, hi Dave! I didn't mean to imply you were a fascist, really.)

This is, in all honesty, the story that may never see the light of day. If I ever decide to publish it, it may well be under a pseudonym, or somewhere I'd tell very very few people about it. It's not because I'm ashamed to write something sexual. It's not even that I'm ashamed to let people read something I've written that's sexual. It's, well... largely autobiographical. Transparently so, and I think it will remain that way, no matter what attempts I make at disguising it. If you know me, you're going to know what I'm writing about as you read it. And now, like a goomba, I practically just told all of you that it's autobiographical (although it may not all be!), so you'd know that it happened, and that it wasn't some twisted fantasy of mine.

It isn't shame that would keep me from sharing this story from you, from posting it next to all the stories about faeries and werewolves and vampires. It's fear. Fear that you just don't want to know that much about me. Fear that you might be hurt by what I have to say. It's not a happy story. Fear that my attempts at capturing passion on a page are going to come out laughable and potboilerish. Fear that my sexuality will seem laughable and potboilerish.

And let's not even get into the idea that very fat people aren't supposed to even be sexual.

Fear and loathing aside (fear of loathing?), it's a story about secrets, and not all the secrets in it are mine alone to tell. What do you do when you have a story you have to tell, but aren't sure if you can ever share it? You write it in the dark hours, just before dawn, just after sunset, huddled in front of the computer in a darkened room, struggling to capture emotion and nuance and memory -- 'What did he say?' 'When did he say it?' 'How do I describe that touch?' 'How did his eyes look then?' Struggling to make it breathe instead of burble and boil melodramatically.

Then, if you have to, when you finish it, you save the file away in a subdirectory, the millenial equivalent of locking it away in a drawer. You may sandwich it into a collection of stories someday -- if you're ever lucky enough to publish in such -- someday when the events are far enough removed that no one really cares anymore, someday when you're old enough that the exploits of your twenties aren't going to make anyone peer curiously or laugh or shiver in revulsion.

And sometimes, only sometimes, you find someone to show it to. And you let out a little bit of the story you carried around, first in your head, then in your proverbial drawer. And a little more of the stone gets chipped away.

(An aside to my friends: if you think it's about you, it probably isn't.) Posted by Lisa at October 9, 2000 02:15 PM