The Ways in Which Writing May or May Not Resemble Sex

Setting the Mood

When I was younger, I wrote at my desk, a gracious Mexican affair bought in a first-sight passion. The seat was hardwood, ambitious. Many an essay has this desk to thank for its existence, as does my son; it’s where I measured out my fertility drugs into a hopeful series of syringes, before resting my weight on its kindly bulk to stick myself—a useful metaphor, perhaps, for the writing life. These days, I write most often with legs stretched out atop the indulgently accommodating mattress my husband and I bought after a lengthy battle with mold spores and marauding dust mites, those naughty squatters drawn to our ancient pocket-springs by the relics of connubial activity (skin, sweat, etc.) and the feeding of our resultant offspring (breast milk, Cheerios mush, drool). Which tells you most of what you need to know about the current state of my erotic and creative life.

The bed offers prolonged support, along with a more complex and satisfying perspective. Semi-prone, I can look out, over my laptop, to the outrageous display of azaleas and other blowsy Southern efflorescence outside the window, shaming me with the perennial “come hither” morphology of the flowers, and thence up into the leafy, austral vista and the great unknown. It’s a fine place, in any case, to rest between long days of standing before students, promoting the benefits of taking, in their own compositions, the long view.

This is all to say that where there’s comfort and unencumbered feeling and a glimpse of the infinite––of nature’s determined will to “get it on” in the face of storm and drought––there is, too, the potential for story. As writers, we need our room-with-a-view to be both reflective retreat and motivating, sustaining base camp, from whence we can strike out and return to restoke the fire, or what Rick Bass calls our “lust” for the work––the energy that brings us back to the keyboard. Deep writing of the kind necessary for creative nonfiction requires a space in which we can go floating off into the big empty of the subconscious, where the mundane, must-do zones of the brain can go quiet and allow the hippocampus, that galaxy of memories and creative connection, to snap on: Hel-lo! Things need to get hot and jiggly in there before the juices can flow.

This is that state of quiet arousal in which we ignore the phone, our bladder, the pan burning dry on the stove. Everything and everyone gets the same treatment: we’re not available, not in, in the expected sense. Oh, but we are: deep in that inner space where we step out into the dope of the weightless atmosphere, ready to drown. How deliciously new and vast and welcoming it is in there, all that undiscovered territory; how readily each frontier opens up to us and the psychic, memory-studded cosmos reveals itself, vision upon vision.

When we’re writing memoir, in particular, we have to be prepared to fall fully into the black hole of the past, to be sucked beyond the “event horizon” of the particular story we’re working on, no turning back. Risky, sometimes painful, but often tantalizing stuff. Moreover, if we let ourselves keep our eyes open and gaze fully into that material, even—and especially—when it feels most uncomfortable, that’s when we connect on an increasingly meaningful level with both that material and our imagined reader. It might seem odd to equate writing and coital practice, but this is precisely what Jessica Graham does in her guide to mindful mating, Good Sex.

Acceptance and curiosity, she argues, are essential in helping us achieve a fully “embodied experience” in the bedroom, where we most want to connect in an “outrageously intimate” way with our partner (think, reader) and access our most deeply buried material. And, as Graham notes, time flies when we’re having this kind of Tantric, hyperconscious fun.

Here I am now, gazing into my computer screen, and Mac, this fancy bad-boy with his oh-so-responsive keys and pixelated glow, stares back, open to anything and everything I have to say. In Mac’s eyes, I can do no wrong; I can be my most marvelous, un-pin-down-able, unedited self, free to explore without the outside world’s tight-lipped disapproval. Mac is sexy because he lets me say it like it is; he doesn’t stop me or fret about what the neighbors might say if I make a lot of noise. And just like that, a whole morning has gone by!

Rising Action, Falling Action

The author of creative nonfiction, diving for core truths, must engage in the writing process with this special kind of all-in ecstatic energy, and it’s this libidinous relationship of the writer to her work, I think––our lust for the fully lived and examined life, as explored and made manifest on the page––that informs, too, what falls out there, the shape and substance of the work. The arc of rising desire and ultimate fulfillment is the same force that drives the creation of the classic dramatic arc, this stimulation and energy and fearless concentration that help us arrive at a satisfying narrative and rhetorical climax: the union of the lived story and its purpose or ultimate meaning. Hard to argue that Freytag’s pyramid, that whole teasing package of exposition, rising action, climax, and resolution (or, perhaps, some more feminine version of that graphic, a slow-building, crashing wave of intensity) doesn’t mimic almost exactly the sex act: the self-same pattern of arousal, orgasm, and comedown.

Isn’t this what we feel when we’re in the full flow of our writing? The rising of the creative sap, the slow building and unclenching of tightly packed inner tensions, a kind of interior Women in Love-style naked brawl, followed, if we’re lucky, by sustained, explosive release (the high point of the scene, or epiphany, finally detonating), then the high-density aftershocks, our wild, spent energy draining away, leaving us breathless and meditative, thrilled with (and sometimes a little embarrassed by) what we’ve risked: with what’s been liberated out into the world in that moment of radical, audacious revelation.

In personal narrative, our writing practice mirrors a specially concentrated version of this high-energy arc. During the rising action and at the high point of releasing our own story onto the page, we connect with both our self and our imagined reader in a rare and profoundly personal way; we share who we are at an almost cellular level, leading, if we get it right, to a sense of mutually achieved unity. Like Sendak’s mischievous Mickey cavorting naked in his hungry, treat-filled night kitchen, when we get it right, we are in the story, and the story is in us.

Hitting the Spot

I suspect each writer’s libido functions differently: we are shy or like things on the feral side; we like a ménage à trois (or more!) or self-imposed restrictions; we like artificial stimulation, deep commitment, laughter, toys. I take weeks over a single story, loving it, rejecting it, undressing it over and over, getting tangled and hot and hungry in the process; I talk (tenderly, occasionally dirtily) to my pages; I like my notebooks a particular way, sleek and hardworking; I get disappointed when things don’t work the way I hoped. Others, perhaps, are aficionados of the quickie or can see their way blindfolded. Maybe you are in that wonderful first flush when the desire to write seems never to run dry. In which case, stay in that bed and roll in it!

Regardless, this art requires energy that gets sapped from us in great surges and requires replenishment. Writing is exercise, a dynamic workout, and we need to rest well when we’re spent, to stop and feed ourselves. It’s all too easy to forget this and end up incapable, unwashed, unhappy, our blood sugar dipping dangerously; sustaining the effort requires us to develop a practice akin to Tantra, that hyperconscious, hyper-embodied, mindful expansion and slow release of energy that brings about intense satisfaction: a chakra-cleansing awakening that won’t drain or actually kill us. In short, the same things that make us good lovers make us good writers.

To succeed at either endeavor, we must open ourselves to adventure, to new experiences, to kink, if you will, and be willing to shrug off anxieties and previous identities. To connect with our reader, we must also nurture a sense of patience and generosity—a consideration of our reader’s presence and needs as much as our own. Does our storytelling come, ultimately, from a place of narcissism or of love? Is there a place in our work for the tease, and if there is, is that teasing ethical? Are we connecting honestly with ourselves and our reader? Can our writing, in fact, be love? Writing may or may not be sex, but it’s the journey, shared or otherwise, as well as the tenderness we bring to the endeavor, that gives it meaning.

We have to take the enterprise seriously; ourselves, not so much. Writing this, I am excited, buzzed; the effort is both lovely and fully exhausting. I want you to be roused by the sweep of my words and go away satisfied, but my life shouldn’t depend on it. If I focus on your pleasure, on how you might respond, in the end, I’m rewarded with a sense of outward release. I’ve said what I think, and it’s enough: over, now, to you.

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The above is excerpted from Nicola Waldron’s piece in Creative Nonfiction #71, Let’s Talk About Sex (Summer 2019), originally titled “A Kink in the Tale: On Libido and the Writing Practice.” Used with the permission of Creative Nonfiction. Copyright © 2019 by Nicola Waldron.