I have been unproductive as a fiction writer for quite a few years now. It began in the wake of finishing my PhD and, for a while, I attributed the writer’s block to intellectual exhaustion. Then I wondered if, perhaps, the practice of thinking critically about the process and mechanisms of fiction writing had somehow ‘broken’ my ability to do it.
But in looking back over my blog, I realize that the block had begun earlier than I thought. It wasn’t a sudden stoppage, but a slow loss of desire. I have started a lot of stories but I cannot finish them. And in examining my emotions, I find that my sense of responsibility is the problem. The only subject matter that has ever compelled me to write is in the field of transgression. It is this aspect of social human experience that has always provided me with creative fodder.
Humans are, with a few exceptions, social creatures. We thrive in company and have overcome almost all our environmental threats by living in groups. While some of us may enjoy our alone-time more than others, we generally choose to live in social groups. And this sets up a paradox. Because it is impossible for cohesive groups to exist without controlling, repressing or subverting our instinctive urges. So, we created laws and sets of values, taboos and virtues to mitigate the selfish, narcissistic part of our selves. I’m not singing the praises of all the norms we have created. I’m just pointing out that sociality is impossible without some schema of rules that moderate instinct. This is the essence of a shared reality. And it could be argued that it is an entirely constructed fiction, it is essential to cooperative living.
For centuries, humans ascribed these rules to the gods. It was the gods, or god, who dictated how we should live and behave with one another. But, slowly, from the period of the Enlightenment onwards, we began to toy with the idea that perhaps we were the authors of those rules. And that, while some of our most commonly shared taboos might have some foundation in nature (the prohibition against incest is probably a product of the observed results of inbreeding in either human or animal populations), many were simply invented to stop us killing each other in a rage.
It was post-modernism that dealt the deathblow to the concept of absolute truth or absolute right. But is important to remember that the post-modernists who challenged all these absolutes were also people who, for the most part, understood the fundamental importance of a shared reality (fictional or otherwise) to the cohesion of society. More recently, the political forces in society who have decided that truth is unimportant have no interest in social cohesion. In fact, just the opposite.
You may think I’ve traveled a long way from my opening sentence. What has this got to do with my writer’s block? Well, it comes back to the concept of fiction. About 8 years ago, I began to notice that fair number of my readers left comments that made me suspect they were not reading my work as fiction, but as some kind of psychosexual guide to living. That made me increasingly uneasy. Especially in view of some of the subjects I grapple with in my fictional writing. I focused on transgression within the no-man’s land of fiction specifically because I thought it was a safe space in which to explore the consequences of it. And while I believe that transgression has a part to play the evolution of social values, advocating transgressive acts in reality was never my purpose. Indeed, many of my stories are cautionary tales.
In response to the frightening feedback that some readers were using my fiction as a guide to living, my stories became more and more didactic. I felt an increasing need to reflect the sometimes-painful consequences of transgression in my fiction. This produced stories that gave me no sense of accomplishment or pride. They were schoolmarmish and self-referential. I found them nauseatingly politically correct. And while I fully embrace political correctness in daily life, I’m not a fan of it in fiction.
Meanwhile… fiction was becoming reality. The rise of Trumpism rendered transgression mainstream. It made overt sexism, racism, ableism, non-consent, transactionalism and selfishness into social virtues. For millions and millions of people, it made the pursuit of truth, of scientific inquiry, of the shared aspiration to improve all our lives… all those things became the pathetic, useless pastimes of the ‘liberal elite’. Even the fundamental tenets of Judeo-Christianity – while given sanctimonious lip service – were rapidly and gleefully pushed aside to usher in the era of fuck-it-all selfish indulgence and an orgy of white victimhood.
When I saw women wearing t-shirts saying ‘Trump can Grab my …. Pussy’ at Trump rallies, I knew my writings on transgression no longer held any cultural value as tools of intellectual inquiry. What was the point in writing about taboo while Trump groped Ivanka’s ass on live television and millions of people still loved him. I’m not going to even get into the vast level of barely-hidden financial corruption, of flagrant race-baiting, or the millions of lives lost to a global Covid-denying right-wing ruling class. I’m not going to get into it because I’ll start weeping and never finish this blog post.
In a recent opinion piece for Politico, the political writer and strategist Jeff Greenfield pointed out that almost half of Republicans knew that Trump’s lies were lies, but did not care. Please let that sink in. This appetite to choose fiction over fact is incompatible with a functioning democracy. It’s actually incompatible with a functioning society. Because although all societies are built on a shared, fictional narrative, none can survive the conscious admission that it is entirely fiction.
I can’t produce fiction these days. I have to hold on to every tiny shred of concrete reality I can lay my hands on. Anything else feels like a cosmic betrayal right now.
Wow.
This makes me terribly sad.
But it explains a lot.
Well said. Thank you for sharing your thought process.
You should check your PC rubbish at the door and just write the wonderful erotic fiction you are capable of. Or just return to academia continue to drink the leftist koolaid that seems to prevail there.
I for one find it sad you feel so poorly about half of the voting public and lack any intellectual curiosity to wonder what they feel about the country. If we are so divided and you hear completely opposite stories from each side. The truth is ALWAYS somewhere in between. Use that wonderful mind you have. I will not support you with my subscription while you try to sort your delusion.
I do wish you well and hope to follow again when your authorship continues as before.
Mark
The most interesting thing about your comment is your objectification of me as useless as anything more than a producer of porn for you. Your patronising ‘use that wonderful mind you have’… to produce more of what I want, and shut up about what I don’t want to deal with.
It’s the modern day equivalent of stay in the kitchen. Thanks Mark, but no thanks.
I appreciate the integrity of this post every bit as much as I’ve appreciated your stories – which I’ll miss. It’s been so rare to encounter fiction in which language is not a barrier to eroticism, but its medium. For what it’s worth, I’m not sure that the danger of the present moment lies so much in the mainstreaming of transgression, as in a collective yearning for absolution from responsibility – for strong men who will stop all the noise and anxiety (economic, ecological, social) and make the world simple, clear and clean again. Fascism is and has always been my deepest, most visceral fear. Perhaps there’s a reason for that… Perhaps, repulsive and abhorent thought its ideology is to me, there’s something in the unquestioning adherance to authority that I find compelling. I think that your stories have helped me to examine that impulse within myself and, as such, may even have acted as a sort of innoculation. For that, and for the stories, thank you.
Thank you so much for this. Your writing has been an oasis of safe and pleasurable self expression for me. And I have often wondered how you are. Sending you love and blessings for oasis that bring you joy and satisfaction. Thank you for these beautiful, intellectual fictions. I have learned so much about myself and life in reading them.
Thank you for being you! We made it past the first hurdle (getting drump out of office) but the rest of the race is far from over. Have faith and continue to speak your truth.
May God bless and keep you, child!❤️
I have loved your erotic fiction since my husband died five years ago. (Well, that’s when I discovered you!). Your work is like nothing else I have ever found. It has brought me pleasure and release. I’ve also appreciated your thoughts and words like these where you share insight into your thinking and the world as a writer. Please know that your work has touched me, enriched my life, broadened my world. I hope you read these comments!
I read a piece you published on literotica and became a fan. (They met in a dentist’s office… ) I admire your skill and intelligence as a writer, your insight and humor as a human.
I share your incredulity, outrage and grief. I’m sorry they silenced your desire to speak through your writing to the humanity of your readers.
Thanks for writing and publishing in the past. You have talent as well as skill, and it was a pleasure to read such a well crafted story.
I hope you will once again feel inspired again to bring your sensibilities to the page.
You are a writer.
I don’t want to sound stupid or naieve but could you use fiction against the right wing?
There are reasons we moved away from the 1930’s/1950’s idea of what a woman is, and what her role should be
Could you write for instance a Janis Joplin Woodstock strong woman and show how Trumpism has feminism back to the Stone Ages
I don’t get it. What you just wrote was published in June of 2021. Trump lost last year. His presidency was traumatic, horrific and hellish….but I honestly don’t believe that is why you stopped writing. That happened years before Trump.
I don’t know how many of your fans saw your writing as a “guide to life” or whatever but for teenaged me it was a lovely introduction to erotica.
You have risen to the occasion with heart, compassion, intellect in that order. Your works of fiction rose far above titillation to literature of merit. Exploring transgression can be driven by scientific professionals for individuals, but only a literary artist, a fictional myth maker can “story journey” the inner self is in charge of self acceptance or improvement or elucidation. Just keep writing. Your core readership listens.
I entirely sympathize.
When I first glimpsed the picture of Trump at the top of the post, I wondered for a moment whether you’d write something pro-Trump. But then I thought, “No, she’s not American, right? Only Americans (some) are that stupid or crazy.”
Heaven grant that enough of us in the U.S. work hard enough to turn this around…
(And thanks for all the excellent things you’ve written in the past.)
Wow, what a statement. Thank you for sharing.
What an incredibly amazing article. I feel this myself. In a way, I feel safer knowing some people know what is happening is insane, as I don’t feel the people who think 10 trillion dollar infrastructure bills or trying to deny Israel life-saving tech know how unreasonable they are being. Nevertheless, neither is good.
RG. O, to be in Europe. On an island. When I made the comment I had always known men like him to you? What you are looking at is what “here” is. But you have never had to be from here.
Love from me. We are looking at who they are in OUR LIFETIMES RG.
Just about all of them, kiddo.
Provocative. But with respect: there might be a deeper problem with the equation of the totality of social life–as framed through the fundamental dynamic of repression and transgression–with American party politics. If politics is a stand in for all of existence then I see a more tragic conflict between trumpian chauvinism and #metoo paranoia: with everyone being compelled to internalize one of these two psychosexual positions–either transgression or repression–as worldly philosophies at the expense of some more comprehensive fulfillment–more comprehensive self-recognition–to be found in a more critical grasp of their mutual constitution. Meanwhile: politics–the public–comes to interpenetrate more and more of social life–the private–with either more and more wildness or in accordance with a more and more irreproachable standard.
The dance of repression and transgression will go on, I think, at the deeper level of everyday late-capitalist existence — a level that the moods of political factions will have difficulty truly reaching. But I wish you luck with this impasse in your imaginative life. Your blog has given me–a man–crucial interlocutive help: not by allowing me to rationalize any sort of terrible behavior, but to understand some of the more difficult questions I’ve begun to have w/ power, desire, the relations between the sexes.
I really don‘t think that poor strange postmodernism is to blame for anything that happens in the world nowadays. You don‘t need a philosophy to scream fake news. And you don‘t need to be a postmodernist to be a liar.
True, but you need post-modernism to understand that lying, and being caught lying, and doubling down on the lie, is the exercise (abuse) of a certain type of power.
I appreciated, and miss, your fiction.
Well it is a shame you have writers block because i think you are as good as Anais Nin. She often wrote a collection of short stories like you. I am just reading little birds, but in many ways your stories are better. I think you probably need new experiences. Feel free to contact me and i can tell you about some real stories that might push your boundaries.
I love your work so much, but can understand the qualms. You are valuable whatever you choose to write about!
Dear Remittance Girl, It has been a few years since I have read any of your posts. I have found them exquisitely written and wonderfully entertaining. I am well aware they are fiction.
In my opinion you are spot on with your Fiction, lies and the Jouissance of Delusion post. These are truly disconcerting times. I often have to turn off the news because I cannot bear to have the insanity in my living room.
I see you wrote this over a year ago. I hope you can find your way back to writing in the style that inspires you. You are a fabulous writer.
Have read most of your work I would say that leaving the story unfinished is your style or leaving the reader wanting more so just keep publishing your unfinished work.
I absolutely understand. I couldn’t write about the things that were pleasurable to me while there was so much unmitigated misery and confusion going on. I just made little scribbles in my notebook or stuck things in my drafts.
Trying to get back to it.
I love your writing maybe your motivation to write is money that’s how Anais Nin started, so I propose to be your benefactor as i would like more stories drop me an email if this turns you on and inspires you to write.
I wish my motivation were money. It would make me a more reliable writer. I don’t need a benefactor, but thank you for the offer.
That is extremely interesting. You hit the mark when you indicate one of the perversions of postmodern perspectivism “More recently, the political forces in society who have decided that truth is unimportant have no interest in social cohesion. In fact, just the opposite.”
I think that fiction – even erotic fiction based on and representing fantasies, fantasy life, and perhaps one’s inner contradictions and conflicts – is an epistemological instrument. Each story is a probe, an experiment, an exploration. Fiction helps us discover and articulate aspects of ourselves and others that, say, the “social sciences” (“social sciences hovers on the edge of an oxymoron) cannot discover or deal with or can only deal with in a very clumsy fashion. Representing one’s own violent or “perverse” tendencies can also help one delineate, define, and manage them, and it also helps individuals, the writer, the reader, the critic, distinguish between what is fantasy and projection and what is reality and “other.” Trump’s followers live largely in a fantasy world; alas, so do fairly large segments of the Left. By the way, I was once an economist – working in Paris and London and so on – so my critical remark about the “social sciences” is, I think, grounded (I have thought quite a bit about the dividing line between “science” and “non-science.” I encourage you to pick up the cudgel and write fiction once again.
I just started reading your blog and though I wanted to get to erotic stories, I just kept browsing through your non fiction articles.
I just began to get fascinated by how you think and why and how you write. To learn that your writing wick has run out is a bummer but it just could be some wax in the way. Maybe not. But I’d love to engage with you… maybe just to learn… or reignite… to help unclutter something for you or just even to understand why there absolutely has to be an end to a gift or maybe I’d like to be helped.
Your writing is the kind of writing that makes me love writing – I mean that first stylistically, the way you put words together makes reading so enjoyable and easy. Also really resonate with your frustrations, especially in light of the 2024 election. The fact that trump’s blatant fck-you to the law tickles the media in a favourable way is sad and scary
I just found this 2021 piece you wrote and I cannot thank you enough, I thought I was out here in this bazaar America all alone where the truth now is just an alternate set “facts”. As sorry as I am you are having writers block I am more than relieved that I am not the only person that sees this insidious evil. Thank you again for putting into words how I have been feeling since 2016.
I miss your work, but still, Thank you for saying this.
I came here searching for erotic stories and read some like nothing I’ve ever read before.
I’m not a wide reader of erotica.
I enjoyed both Winter Kimono
And the one about the students of the word of god
But you are a talented writer
And possess a penetrating mind
Do not lose heart due to the extent of coruption and greed in the hearts and minds of others.
Forge your own path in the seeking of eternal truth.
Here is a question maybe your writers block is because you need “treats” for “treats” to write.
Anais Nin had a sponsor and this provided the motivation to write.
Happy to be your sponsor as i have read all your work and would like to read more what sort of treat would you like and maybe that is another story in itself.