Complicated Characters

Lonely people can make fascinating stories. I think so. Maybe that's because I kind of identify with lonely people, being a lonely person. But the Sad Clown act always appealed better to me than happy clowns. Happy clowns annoy me. Never liked them. Not even as a child.

A few months ago I stumbled across an old Jackie Gleason movie on our local PBS station: Gigot. It was a movie about a mute man living a pitiful life who befriends a woman and child down on their luck. Apart from the humorous aspects of the film, of which there were many, what I especially liked was the sensitivity of Gigot. Not that every lonely person is automatically sensitive. Some are lonely because they're so creepy nobody wants to be around them.

I remember seeing the movie "Lili" when I was young, starring Leslie Caron. She played a lonely young women who becomes part of a circus troupe. I haven't seen the movie in years but I remember it pulled at me.

There was a scene in a Burt Reynolds move (The End) which just made me cry. It was near the end, right after Reynolds' character realizes he doesn't want to commit suicide after all. He makes it back to shore only to find Dom DeLuise's character there - ready and willing to help him die. There is a struggle scene which ends with Reynolds throwing DeLuise to the ground and screaming at him that he doens't want to die and so "Quit trying to kill me! Do you understand?"

It was DeLuise's reply which makes me cry. He chokes up and says, "Yes. You don't like me anymore."

There is something in those words put together in that sequence and uttered from the heart that tears at me. It was at that moment that DeLuise's character, who had hitherto been annoying to me, endeared itself to my heart. Suddenly, I felt I understood this character. And in understanding, I found I liked him.

Sad characters are not so easy to write as one might think. For one thing, they have to have a reason to be sad. Seldom do single events turn people into sad people. Single events can make people sad, but unless that event is completely devastating it probably won't have the effect of turning that person sad henceforth. Humans tend to recover. Especially if we have support of people we care about.

The sadness I'm trying to talk about seems to result from a person seeing their self-worth as no longer a part of themself. The two have become disconnected. You will notice - in real life - that sad people often are very giving. Why? Most likely because the times when they have received what they want have resulted from when they gave.

And so they give.

Money. Food. Possessions. Sex.

What makes their situation even sadder is that there are a lot of people who recognize the signs of such people and will take complete advantage of their giving nature. They will take every penny they have. Eat them out of house and home. Steal possessions. Make them their sex toy instead of their lover.

These are the stories that are hard to write. They may seem fairly straightforward, but they're not. Not if one is to make them believable.

Experience Makes for Good Stories

It never ceases to amaze me how stupid I can be. I mean, by many standards I am actually an intelligent person. In school I always got As in classes I liked, Bs in classes that were interesting but not my favories, Cs in the other classes.

When confronted with problems at work and school I would usually come up with a creative solution that worked. I remember the one place I worked I redid their entire coding system. Spent three months doing it. I found out that fifteen years later they were still using it.

And my ideas for improving efficiency were all implemented with great success.

No, I am not a stupid person.

So why do I behave so stupidly?

It's desperation. You know?

That feeling of extreme panic when I realize what my life has turned into. And so when someone likes me, I put reason and caution aside and leap forward, hoping to find something that just isn't there.

I can make use of my stupidity. In my writing.

My characters can be just like that. Intelligent. Until it comes to a matter of the heart. And then - like the flipping of a switch - foolishness reigns supreme.

Except I have a difficult time not writing happy endings. Too much reality for me, I guess.

I guess I can't find what I'm looking for because it's beyond my having in this life. Or maybe I just don't know what it is.

Whichever, I now have another painful experience to draw from when writing a story about a character  I want to be real.

They Wouldn't Have Hired Me Anyway

I haven't posted in a while. It's hard to think of something wise and profitable to say. All I have are feelings. There is no real wisdom to impart.

I thought about applying for work at one of the nearby GLBT (I don't know the correct order) newspapers. I hesitated because, technically, I don't fall into any of those groupings. I'm just kind of confused about myself. That's why I refer to myself as "genderqueer".

So I hesitated to apply for any kind of work. (Even paper hanger.) But this past week I did some online searches for which papers were nearby. I had a friend who had gone to work for the one. But that one seems to be out of business. In fact, so many of them are. Ultimately, I wasn't able to find any. But then I have a hard time finding anything online. I guess there's a smart way to search for things, but I've never figured it out. It's hard for me to find any kind of publishing place which would accept fantasy stories about lesbian love. I guess that just proves how much I don't belong, although I wish I did.

Specialty papers all over are going out of business. I've read some articles distressing over how the entire GLBT publishing industry has taken very hard hits over the past few years. Few of them had the financial resources to withstand the economic downturn. The small are usually the first to go. Even when they have something important to say, or serve a very useful purpose.

Everyone needs a voice. Sometimes that voice comes through someone else's writing, or music, or performance, or speech. That's when another person agrees with our position, but while we're unable to speak for ourselves, they can do it for us. They say what we want to say, or would say if we could.

But sometimes we need to speak for ourselves. That isn't always easy. And with fewer places to publish, it's even harder than it was.

Reflected Attitudes

The creative arts often have a huge impact on society and its social rules. This is particularly so of video, I think. I also believe the reason for this is that there are loads of people who would never think of picking up a book to read, but who will watch almost anything on television or in the theatre. Movie theatre. I expect the number of live performance attenders is similar to book readers.

Not that there aren't a lot of book readers. There are just more people who don't read book than who do.

But you can see the evolution of things by watching old movies and comparing them with newer issues. There was a lot of religious themes in the early films, although not exclusively. And when Christianity was portrayed it was done in overdramatic fashion. Other religions were put down. Homosexuality was not an overt topic in most Hollywood productions, although there were films to address it.

By the time the fifties came around preachers were almost always portrayed as crazy and/or phony. Gay and lesbian themes were kept in the background, couched with 'in' words and catch phrases that the general public would not understand.

In the sixties and seventies preachers were mostly ridiculous. And so were Gays and lesbians. Gay and lesbian characters were always overt, and always the source of one-line jokes. While this did bring the issue more out in the open, I wonder if it didn't also encourage 'gay-bashing'. I have read of small gangs who would seek out homosexuals in order to beat them up from before this era, so I'm not sure.

Gays and lesbians are still often the focus of humor, particularly on television sitcoms. But it's changing. As more and more people become public about what they believe and how they feel and want to live, society is being forced to acknowledge there are a lot more people who fall within the labels than previously thought.

That's video. What about the written word? What kind of an impact has that had over the years? After all, the written word has existed for thousands of years, while video is barely over one hundred years old. And talkie films are less than one hundred years old. So, how has the written word impacted social mores and such?

To be honest, I don't really know. I am learning through my online research that the subject has been written about for hundreds of years. I also expect there are a lot of stories written in which main characters were GLBT (My research has also shown there are a variety of orders for these letters. I use this order because it's what I'm used to.) Kind of like Abus Dumbledore in J.K.Rowling's, Harry Potter, series. According to Rowling, Dumbledore is gay. And yet the character never behaves or talks in a sexual manner. There are no hints of child molestation or adult affairs**. But then Dumbledore was also monogomous. But he is a natural character, and a favorite.

I expect there are a lot of characters in books which are of a like mold. Their authors saw them as gay, lesbian, or whatever, but didn't make it part of the actual story because that issue had nothing to do with the story. So the differences were subtle. Too sublte to be noticed by most of the reading audience, but probably enough to bring comfort to some. Comfort in the sense of familiarity. Of belonging.

Writing stories has evolved over the centuries. It's harder, I think, to get accepted by major publishers now, but it's easier to write whatever we want to write. And that is good for we who like to write.

** added later for clarification || I do not mean to imply that GLBT people are more prone to child molestation than others. However, it always seemed to me that that was how they were portrayed in the past. My point with J.K.Rowling was that she portrayed Dumbledore as normal.

What Should Writers Know When They Write

What I probably should be doing is taking a few days between posts to collect my thoughts better, instead of wandering around every day with random thoughts. But for now I'm posting even when I'm not entirely clear in my head what it is I want to say. I hope it doesn't make me too difficult to follow.

I'm thinking more about the fact that writing about sex and writing about lesbian lifestyles do not have to be the same.

Maybe it's just an excuse, so I can tell myself I don't have to write bedroom scenes. Not that lesbian love scenes are any harder (or easier) to write than heterosexual love scenes. I don't write those well, either.  The problem I run into is getting so caught up in the physical I forget to include what's really important: the spiritual binding which comes between real lovers, as opposed to sexual partners. I suppose even in mere sexual gratification there is some sort of spiritual binding taking place, but it would be minimal.

The more I write about it the more I find myself wondering if sex isn't merely a red herring. Perhaps what I am really struggling with is writing believable love. For that is what I really want to write. Sex is simply one of many possible manifestations of that love. It's such a controversial topic that it easily can assume center stage. But the real issue is the love which motivates the sex. Without the love there is no story worth reading. With the love it is the anticipation that these two people really belong with each other. Olympia and Aileen (opened my baby name book to two random pages and took the first names I liked) are two women - or I suppose they could be too young to be called women - who meet casually. They are not looking to fall in love. They are not looking for a sexual partner. They just meet and 'click' together, so they continue to meet when they can. They become friends. The friendship blossoms. At some point in time romance enters the relationship.

The truth is, that is pretty boring stuff all by itself. In a story, there has to be more going on. Something, or someone, has to be under challenge, and at least one of the main characters has to be directly involved in resolving the crisis. It is, in fact, this crisis which allows the relationship to build quickly and quietly without being addressed by the women. They are so focused on resolving it that they don't take the time to address their relationship properly. This will ultimately put their relationship at risk, for ignored relationships can fall apart just as quickly as they formed in the first place. The story's climax (I'm sorry, I couldn't think of a better word) is when both crises reach their moment of decision. The external crisis must be solved for good or ill, and the internal, love, crisis, must also be decided.

That, of course, is only one way of doing it. Another would be for Olympia and Aileen to meet and almost immediately begin a physical relationship. In this kind of story the question isn't about sexuality, coming out, or anything like that. The internal crisis is whether or not the relationship is truly a life long relationship, or one which should be broken, and the women go their separate ways.

There are a variety of ways to write the story. The key is very much like other things I've posted about. To write a story there are things a writer must know in her head:

• Who is the target audience (women, men, young girls, questioning, timid)
• What is the underlying question (sexuality-discovery/coming out, relationship-marriage/just lovers)
• What is the focus (love, sex)

I have probably oversimplified the questions, but I think you get the idea. Whether we, as writers, use written down outlines or not, we must have a clear idea of the answers to those questions and questions like them before we can effectively tell our stories.

If our goal is to produce erotica then we certainly should not be writing for young girls, and our focus is clearly going to be more on the sex than the love. And the underlying question is probably less about discovery of oneself than it is about what kind of relationship is going to be established.

If our goal is to explore sexuality then our target audience could be any of  the choices, but probably less likely to be men. (That's a prejudice of mine.) The relationship is more in the background and self-discovery and acceptance becomes the focal point. I also believe a story like this is ultimately less about sex and more about love.

There are valid reasons for writing any kind of story for any group of people. But we need to know what it is we're trying to do when we go into a story. Why is this story important to us, as writers? That's probably the biggest question of all.

Who is It For

Just recently I finished a story and sent it to a good friend of mine. She liked it, but she pointed out a significant flaw. At the start of the story I raised a question, or perhaps a better way to put it here is, I established my main character's primary goal. So, to the reader, the resolution of that goal became the story's focal point. At the end of the story I answered the question of whether my main character would become comfortable with her sexuality, and I did it nicely. At least, that's what I gathered from her critique. However, the question I asked at the beginning was NOT about my main character's sexuality. I did raise the sexuality question, but not at the start.

So the stories biggest flaw was that it was not bookended. I told the reader that one question was most important, and then didn't treat it as important. Meanwhile, I felt the sexuality question was most important but didn't raise it at the start. This made for a nice, but unfulling, story.

To make the story right I have to stop being so coy about my main character's struggles with whether or not she is a lesbian and put it up front and in plain sight from the start. That way the reader knows what she's reading and can better appreciate the main character's conflict as she seeks to learn who she really is.

It's obvious to me that I took the back door approach to the sexuality question because I'm still embarassed to write about it. The very term 'lesbian' seems to bring up connotations of sex, and I'm still embarassed by sex. I'm sorry, but I was taught I should be, and I learned that lesson too well. You know, I still haven't written that explicit sex scene. And nobody would even know about it but me! I'm not really a prude. I just get embarassed.

That the word 'lesbian' should be a sexual word is wrong, I think. I kind of spoke about this, poorly, I know, in my previous post, where I wondered publically what constitutes being a lesbian. A comment brought up the idea that so much of lesbian fiction is very sexual in nature and is actually geared toward heterosexual men, who get off on the idea of women being together. But lesbian stories shouldn't be written for straight men. They shouldn't be written for men at all. Lesbian stories should be written for women. Lesbians in particular. If men, or straight women, enjoy reading, too, so much the better. But they should not be the target audience.

I got to thinking about that, and I wondered if that wasn't the problem I was having with my story. The idea of straight men reading lesbian stories hadn't really entered my thoughts. But in order to see how others wrote love scenes I had been reading a lot of online examples. I quit because it seemed to me so very few were well written at all that I was only filling my head with how NOT to write them. But when the idea that these stories were written to excite the imaginations of straight men, I realized that I felt the same way about them. They did not seem like stories written for women seeking commonality with someone who shared their love preference. But I think all of that reading distorted my thinking about lesbian stories in general. I think I subconsciously forgot my target audience, and I'm not comfortable writing sex stuff for straight men. Or for anybody for that matter.

My stories are supposed to be about finding acceptance, falling in love - love, not sex, and being free to be who one is. And my target audience is women. I need to remember that and forget about the stereotypes. I need to just let my characters be real people, and not animals which are slaves to passion and sexuality. While there are real people who are, they are not the subject of my writing. My writing is not supposed to be about sex, although I want sex to (sometimes) be a part of my stories.

So, between my friend's critique, and the comment on my post, I think I have what I need to fix up my story and make it something people want to and enjoy reading. Any people.

Pretty is as Pretty Does, Not How it Looks

For years I have wondered about myself. What would I really be like if I were comepletely left to my own with no fear of repurcussion?

To be honest, I'm not sure.

I like the frilly daintiness which is assumed with being "pretty". At the same time, I like being "tough".

What I have discovered over time is that "pretty" isn't always what I think it is. I have met more than few people who, at first encounter, strike me as plain, or even unattractive. Then, as I get to know them, they become more and more beautiful. Some have even become sexy. Do I dare blush to say that?

Still, when I imagine myself as being "pretty", I have a definite image in mind. I guess that shows prejudice on my part. For while Tahira (not her real name, but the same meaning) was about the most beautiful person I knew, kind, loving, and gentle in spirit, she was also sixty pounds overweight. And despite the fact that by the time we parted ways I saw her as a very sexy woman because of her spirit, I don't think of Tahira when I think pretty. I feel bad about that, too. But there is physical and there is spiritual. The spiritual is better, but it's hard not to be influenced by the physical.

The concept of who is pretty and who isn't is mean. How many women (and men) have suffered because the world around them declares they are NOT pretty? I remember Tahira coming into the office one day (she was my supervisor, and we shared a small enclosed office with one other) and breaking down and crying. I quickly closed the door so the whole company wouldn't know. When she collected herself she told me why she was crying. She had gone to the store the day before with her little boy. Walking from the car there were teenagers nearby who saw her. They made rude and horrible remarks about how fat she was. It bothered her at the time, although she managed to not cry then. But she couldn't forget it, and now, at work with me, she broke down and released her feelings.

It tortured me to hear that someone so beautiful was being so mistreated. It cut me, because when I had been in school I had done my share of teasing others for being fat. My pennance is that I am now fat. Serves me right, I suppose.

Why did I bring this up? Because I tend to write my main characters as being my idea of pretty. I guess it's because I so want to be pretty, and the only place I can is in make-believe. But part of writing is to be real, so maybe I should consider writing about the poor girl/woman who doesn't fit the world around her's idea of pretty.

The Life of Priscilla

Daytime soap operas have been around since at least the 1930s. Then they were on radio and sponsored by soap manufacturers. They were dramatic little shows, also known as 'operas'. So that is how they got their name.

I have never been one to get into them much. Some people become very involved with them. One of my grandmothers used to get so mad at a certain woman on some show she watched because the woman was so mean to someone else. To Grandma, watching the soap opera was a kind of voyeurism. I suppose she felt like she were the 'fly on the wall', watching real people live real lives. But you don't have to be a senior citizen to get like that. I have known plenty of twenty and thirty-somethings who are the same way.

When I was young it was assumed one hundred percent of soap opera viewers were women. Subsequent history has proven that to be a false assumption. Plenty of men are just as caught up in the lives of these fictional characters.

The truth is, prime time television series aren't much different. What is different is the time table. Prime time television series provide isolated events in the live of its characters. Soap operas follow their characters almost minute by minute.

I'm not sure how I need to ask this, but can short stories achieve the same thing as a soap opera?

What if I were to create a character, and just follow her daily life and write about it? Like the radio and television soap operas there would be no specific goal to be achieved, or obstacle to overcome. Just the daily things, like having to deal with losing one's job, falling in love, having children, getting divorced, having an affair, learning a new trade.

The key, of course, would be to make the character so interesting that readers would actually care about her, or maybe one of the regular characters around her. I suppose that would be something that might work in a magazine, which attracts readers for others reasons than just to read about the life of Priscilla. (I just opened my baby name book and randomly chose a name that sounded nice.)

Generally when we read a story we are looking for something out of the ordinary. We want something to take us away from the mundane daily life we are living for ourselves. But sometimes, it just might be nice to read about someone else's mundane daily life. Especially if they're kind of like us. So maybe Priscilla is a lesbian. Or bi. Or maybe Priscilla doesn't really know what she is regarding relationships. Maybe she struggles with those because she's still trying to live the life she thinks she's supposed to live. Maybe the life of Priscilla isn't a short story, but rather a long journey.

Is that something worth writing?

Oh. And on a different note, Sarah L has a fantastic post on her blog. Link to it here.

Stuck in the Middle Without You

In my profile I call myself "genderqueer". When I picked that label I based it solely on a feeling I have inside, and the recommendation of a friend, who actually suggested it to me.

But recently I found a gender test used by psychologists/pschiatrists when counseling patients about gender issues. I'm not seeing a counselor, but I couldn't resist taking the test anyway. What would it tell me? That I'm really a man? That I'm really a woman? What?

There were a lot of questions, and I don't remember but a few of them, but perhaps the greatest indicator of what result was in store for me was this question:

You have the power to change your sex at will. You will be entirely a woman or entirely a man. Which will you be?

There were several choices available, but the one which slammed home to me was:

I would be a woman or a man depending on how I was feeling at the moment.

So do I need to tell you the results from my taking this test? I came out as Androgynous. My internal gender identity is essentially androgynous, both male and female at the same time, or possibly neither.

To tell you the truth, that is exactly how I feel about myself. How did that old commercial go? "Sometimes you feel lke a nut. Sometimes you don't." I have felt all three of those things. I have felt like a man. I have felt like a woman. And I have felt like I was neither a man or a woman. The third case is usually when I start acting "against my sex" and nobody around me will accept the behavior. Then I don't feel like I fit in with anyone.

So, again considering the purpose of this blog, how do I use that in my writing? I should be able to, I think. Will that help me write love stories between women as I want to do, or will the impact be minimal? Or maybe, because I like fantasy, I should write stories in which my main character can change her identity. To be honest, I have been coming up with stories like that since I was in grade school. I've even written one recently where my main character wasn't always the same sex, but it wasn't through an act of her will. (Wasn't done through surgery, either. It is a fantasy story which I won't go into now.)

If the test was accurate and my feelings are true, then it looks like I'm some place in the middle. (At least on the inside.) I do tend to lean more toward female, but I'm not sure how much more.  But if I create a main character who is neither female nor male, will readers identify with her? (Should I say 'her'?) After all, we like to find the right pigeonhole for people so we can interact properly with them. Maybe its just time we built more pigeonholes. The two we have don't seem to be serving everyone well enough anymore.

I can sing the Steelers Wheel song with new enthusiasm now.

Don't Make Normal Unusual

I've read a lot of books, short stories, and such, and I've watched a lot of movies and television shows. And do you know what just irks me to no end? It when the writer of said book, short story, movie, television show, or such, wishes to show us how normal their lesbian women are by "telling us they're normal". Maybe it's just me, but if the writer feels she needs to go out of her way to tell us something, then it seems pretty clear to me that she doesn't think it's normal.

To me, if a writer is going to write a story (screenplay) about lesbian women, and she wants it to be natural, then don't tell people it's natural, just treat it as natural. If we, as writers, don't make a big deal out of something, our readers should grasp fairly early on it isn't a big deal.

That's the way I want some of my stories to be. That the women are in love, or even married, is not integral to the story. It's just a part of it, like having a heterosexual main character. Maybe she's married. Maybe she has a boyfriend. As a writer we would never think about making a big deal that she's married to a man, would we? Then, if the story doesn't call for it, don't make a big deal that she's married to a woman.

At the same time, I angst about things a lot, and so for a good many of the stories I have been writing the fact that my main character is in love with a woman is important to the story. I recently wrote one in which my main character had to flee her village because she had been discovered with her lover. A friend arrived in the night and helped her escape before the lynch mob arrived. The story followed her flight to a new village, where she had to begin her life anew, only to find a new partner and be caught again.

I suppose there are those who would criticise my main character for becoming involved with another woman so soon after being separated from her previous lover. But the truth was there was no reason for her to believe she would ever see her previous lover again. The friend who helped her escape could not even guarantee her lover got away. Besides, one thing I know for certain from personal experience is this: lonely people are incredibly susceptible to love. We are not promiscuous people. We just want to be loved. And depending on the level of loneliness, and the number of hurts inflicted, we can do a lot of things if we even slightly believe we are loved. And so I felt my character was in character. For who is lonelier than the person whom no one accepts?

I guess I kind of strayed from my original point. Now I'm writing about angst. But angst is important to me right now.

While searching for a place where I might be able to submit some of my work for possible publication I came across something a man wrote about coming out stories. He said he was sick of them. He was tired of the angst and all that went with it. He wanted stories about gay people who were already comfortable with themselves. I understand his point. But at the same time there are a lot of people who are still struggling with who they are. Angst is very much a part of our lives. So I don't think there is no longer any need for such stories. I mean, old-fashioned romance novels are still selling like hot cakes after one hundred years. Right?

Why are We Taught to be Ashamed of Who We Are

I'm going to take Sarah's advice. Haven't yet. Kind of timid. But I'm going to do it. I'm going to write a fleshy, down-and-dirty, love scene. Going to use all the words I can think of. Just because. Just to say I wrote them. Just so I can look at it afterward and say, "I wrote that." And not, "I wrote that?" Won't be posting it here, that's for sure. What Sarah said was to keep this one secret. This is just a break out piece. Once that's done perhaps I can write something a bit more tame? More in line with what actually turns me on. I'm blushing writing that. I know I am. My neck feels warm.

It's funny about sex, isn't it? I don't mean "funny ha-ha". I mean funny, as in strange. Well, that was probably a bad way of putting it, too. I don't mean strange sex, I mean talking, or writing, about sex is so different than talking or writing about anything else. I find it far easier to confess my failures as a person, an employee, a parent, a child, a sibling, a friend, an athlete, a writer, a singer, a performer, or anything else, than to admit my failures regarding sex. I can talk about those other things, usually without blushing, with complete ease. But as soon as sex becomes the topic I'm blushing.

Is it me, or am I just the product of how I was raised? How I was raised seems a bit too easy, although it certainly has to come into play. Maybe it's because so much of the punishment I endured as a child was sexual in nature. One wasn't just spanked, one had their pants pulled down. Generally in public. Bedwetters were publically diapered and laughed at. That was the thing, you know. Punishment not only involved physical pain, but emotional pain always had to accompany it. Humiliation was the order of the day. And it always seemed to revolve around sex somehow.

And so we grow up with all kinds of inhibitions about sex. Taste a beer and one might get into trouble. What was the standard punishment for trying beer and cigarettes when I was young? "Make 'em drink until they get sick." "Make 'em smoke until they're ill." No one ever did that with sex. Get caught masterbating, or worse, experimenting with someone else, and the cry certainly wasn't, "Make 'em f--- until they throw up." No. The whole thing was treated as though it was the worst shameful act that could happen. More beatings and more humiliations.

And so we learn to keep it secret. That's private. Hell, I find it easier to talk about problems going to the bathroom than I do problems about sex. I suppose that's fine, but I want to write. I really do. And if I'm going to write something that seems real, I have to write in a way that presents whatever I write about as being real. And so I have to get past the past - without actually forgetting it. There is great value in remembering the pain. The shame. The anguish. The utter humiliation. Remembering these things helps me write characters who are experiencing pain, shame, anguish, and utter humiliation.

But how do I write a character who is comfortable with her sex, her sexuality, and her sexual preference (be it straight, bi, or lesbian, or whatever) when I am not so sure I am comfortable with those things for myself? I find myself envying those people who have come to terms with who they are regarding sex in all its forms. I think, if I could just be at peace with who and what I am I just might be able to write the things I want to write. But it's this shame thing. Still, maybe I can use that, too. Maybe that's where the tenderness comes from. The loving compassion which, to me, absolutely has to be part of good sex. If I could just put my feelings into it.

Meanwhile, I have an assignment. Going to write some rough, fleshy, down-and-dirty sex scenes. I doubt I'll find them arrousing, but the ice will be broken and maybe I can get through to the other side.

Good luck to me, huh?

Why Be Afraid and Embarrassed

So I thought I would expand the idea of being "jarred" out of the story because of the way a love scene has been written.

Being taken out of the story can happen for other reasons than love scenes. Explicit anything can do that if it isn't done correctly. This is true with gore, profanity, humor, infodumping, etc. But as this blog seeks to discuss love scenes and such in particular I will confine my comments to that.

When I read a story I always try to identify with a character. Usually this will be the main character, but not always. Sometimes one of the supporting cast catches my fancy and I really identify with her (or him, or even it). Generally, the only character to get a love scene is the main character and whoever she is with. In these cases I identify with the main character.

For me, identifying with a character in a love scene means I am imagining myself doing/receiving whatever the main character is doing/receiving. This is where I suppose love senes become especially difficult. If the main character does something I haven't done (or thought of doing), I might recoil. The same is true if the main character has something done to her. This is where personal sensibility can get in the way of good writing, I think.

For instance, suppose I want my main character to be a wild and bold person, willing to try a variety of things. What happens when I put her into love scenes? The likelihood is I become personally embarrassed by her boldness. For just as when I read, when I write I have to "become" the characters. I have to know who is shy and timid and who is dominant and daring. I have to be able to write people who aren't me. With other characteristics it seems I have little trouble doing this. I don't think of myself as being a hateful person, but I think I can write hateful people. I think I can write cruel well enough. But when it comes to sex I'm embarrassed. Here is where I'm afraid to trust my imagination. Why?

I kind of wonder if it isn't because sexual things are so personal. In a way, it's like they cut to the core of who we are. And so the unspoken voice in my head is reading over my shoulder as I write. Everthing is fine. There are occassional comments about this or that. And then I write the love scene. "You find that erotic? That's sick/stupid/dumb/strange/etc."

I could write what I have actually done myself, but then the voice might say, "You did what? And you found that arousing? You don't really do that when you climax, do you?"

It's just so personal. But isn't that what makes a written character come alive? Is writing as much about courage as it is about knowing how to say something?

Can You Write a Love Scene

I'm up during the night a lot. It's when I do some of my best writing.

Lately I have been exploring new relationships in my writing; mainly, lesbian and bi-sexual characters. I have never written about sexual things before. In fact, I have been quite conservative in my stories until the last couple of years. But this year I seem to have awakened a creative area I never knew I had, and I find it most exciting. Even exhilirating.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to write pornography, and I don't think I can write erotica. But loving relationships. That I think I can do. But love scenes are part of loving relationships - or can be. I've been struggling with those a bit. To be honest: I haven't been all that successful.

If anyone has any thoughts, I am more than willing to hear them. How does one write an arousing love scene without becoming pornographic? I don't want to abandon my new world of creativity. I want my women to love each other. But I want them to be real about it.