Doing the Wild Thing – on paper

I worked on a sex scene for my novel all morning. In case you’ve never written about sex, let me tell you that it’s not as easy as you might think. I mean, everybody’s done the deed, so it should be just a matter of recreating experience, right? That is definitely not the case.

There’s a balance that’s sometimes hard to find in writing about sex. You don’t want to come off as a play-by-play on ESPN, but you don’t want to sound like something on the Playboy channel, either. And National Geographic’s tone is really not an option, at least not in my book.

What do you call the various body parts involved? Unless you’re writing a romance, the whole heaving bosom and throbbing member thing just won’t cut it. But the technical route doesn’t work for me. While I’m not opposed to saying penis and vagina, somehow those words don’t flow well on the page.

For those of you who think maybe I’m prudish (total strangers?), let me assure you I’m not. I’m probably way more open about things than many of my friends are comfortable with, and I’m certainly not opposed to using some offensive language every now and then. OK, frequently. Anyway, it’s not Puritanism that makes sex hard to write about. It’s the fact that most people make it out to be such a serious act, when in reality there are knocking elbows and knees and misplaced parts. Sex is sometimes plain out ridiculous.

So I decided that my sex scene would be where I have fun in the book. Where I let things be ridiculous. Or at least moderately so. Once I decided that, I had a great time writing it. The point of putting a sex scene in my book is not to describe a private act with minute accuracy, but to use it to show the relationship between two people. Good relationships are full of fun, and so is good sex.

Oh, and no offense meant to the heaving bosom and throbbing member crowd. Just not what I’m going for.

I Love Mail

Maybe the hardest thing about this nomadic life I’ve been living for the past year is the mailing address issue. No matter how promptly I put in forwarding orders with the post office, I worry that I’ll miss mail. I have nightmares about important letters bouncing from Virginia to NH to SC and back to Virginia and never finding me.

Some people might not care. I do. Mail is a big deal to me. I love mail, love the anticipation of checking the box every day, love the promise that every mail day brings. Will I get a letter, that most anachronistic of pleasures? Will I have an acceptance from Tin House waiting for me when I look inside? Will a new book arrive? A gift?

My relatives have always been wonderful letter writers. My great-grandfather Bob was particularly prolific in his correspondence with me. We wrote back and forth for years, and I’ve kept many of those letters, the last written just a few weeks before his death at 99 years old. I pull them out of my box of treasures every now and then and reread them, remembering his wry sense of humor and his stubborn determination to stay independent as long as possible.

My mother still writes lovely personal notes to everyone she knows. She doesn’t own a computer, doesn’t email or text. She shows people how much she cares by carefully choosing cards and taking the time to cover them with loving thoughts in her elegant handwriting.

I remember the thrill I’d get as a child when a letter would come from one of my aunts. My mother has three sisters, and they all made me feel grown-up and special when they wrote. It makes me sad that kids don’t often get letters like that anymore. So I’ve decided that once a week I’ll write a child or an elderly person a note, just to let someone know he or she is too special for a mere email. I do worry, though, that my efforts may be wasted when people receive letters from me they can’t decipher. After years of typing, my handwriting, which was never very good, has deteriorated to a blur of lines and scribbles that look like something a monkey might do if he got hold of a pen. It’s gonna take a great deal of effort to make those notes legible.

And of course I’ll keep sending out submissions to those journals that still want submissions sent via the US Postal Service. Then I’ll watch the mailbox every day hoping that I put the right address on my self-addressed envelope so that the acceptance letter can find me.

No Excuses

I hear it all the time, and not just from would-be writers, but from would-be potters and artists and gardeners, and well, from just about everybody who claims to want to do something he or she isn’t doing. “I just don’t have the time. But someday, when I do have the time, I’ll write (or paint, or make pots, or grow my own vegetables).”

Bullshit.

We make time for what we want to do. Funny, I rarely hear people say they don’t have time to watch TV, or have sex, or post on Facebook, or eat ice cream. Somehow they find time in their busy lives for those activities. But when it comes to creating something of value, something lasting, suddenly
there isn’t time.

Is Dancing with the Stars more important than writing that novel you’ve been talking about for 10 years? Is what’s happening in twitterverse more important than the half finished canvas in your garage? Is sex or ice cream more important than… OK, so maybe you could make a case for the importance of sex and ice cream. (But you could always make time for artistic pursuits by eating your ice cream and having sex simultaneously. Just a suggestion.)

Tell me how hard writing is, or tell me it hurts too much to do it, or tell me you’re tired of being rejected, or that your butt is tired of being planted in the desk chair. But DO NOT tell me you don’t have time. Everyone can find an hour somewhere in the day to do something important. Get up earlier. Stay up later. Turn off the TV. Get off the internet. Get off the phone.

And if you don’t make time for it, don’t talk about it. Don’t whine about how busy you are. Everyone in this world is busy. The people who create are the ones who really care enough to make time to do it, regardless of the sacrifices. Either you want it badly enough or you don’t.

My writing motto is “no excuses.” I don’t accept them from myself, and I don’t accept them from others. So beware. If you tell me you will write one day when you have time, all you’re going to get from me is “Bullshit.”