The Sweet & Brutal Jouissance of the Story

Firstly, I’d like to call your attention to an interesting series of posts called On The Art of Erotica  going on at EroticWriter.wordpress.com hosted by Will Crimson. The first post is by him (Three Ways to Take a Woman), the second by me (The Wages of Sin), and there will be more going up in the next few days. It’s a delight to read people writing on writing. To see how people approach the craft differently, and how the order the subject in their minds.

This and the discussions that followed on twitter reminded me that I am often far too dour and dry in the way I write about my practice. I don’t often express the immense joy I get out of it. I can’t say it’s always a pleasure. Sometimes it starts that way – there is pleasure in the ideas I’m juggling – but by the time I sit down to write it I realize it will require a lot of intellectual effort to produce something crafted and perfect. Then it’s just hard work.

But sometimes it is entirely different. Do you remember falling in love with someone and being so addicted to them that it almost made you sick? You could not leave them alone, and when you had to, they were like a huge, dark cloud that blocked out half your horizon, so that everything you did was in a half-dream? You could still smell their sweat, still hear their breath in your ear? You felt the ghost of their hands on you hours afterwards?

Some of my pieces have been like that. I’m not sure that I produce them, but more that they erupt into my life and take it over. The story, the characters haunt me. I cannot eat, I cannot sleep. I need to be with it, to dwell in it, to sing it to the finish.

Some stories ride me like a voodoo god. I have to simply submit to them, give myself over to them. There is no other way to tell the story or get it out. Those stories are like insatiable, brutal lovers. Better than any sex. More intoxicating than any infatuation. They make me give and give and give until the story is wrung out of me. When it’s like that, I am in ecstasy. This is the jouissance of writing. And when it’s over, I feel emptied of everything, but not abandoned. Because the story is there and finished and lives.

I often wonder if my readers can tell which stories were like that for me. Part of me hopes they can’t. Part of me thinks they can smell the ones that were.

I just wanted you to know. Sometimes when I write, it’s just that glorious.