Quick note: this another long piece – so long that there are three parts to this post – and it contains lots of bad words and NSFW links. It’s about porn. Enjoy responsibly. xoxxxo
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1. Shadows and Light and Porn: I’m not Universally (Or Historically) Okay with It
I grew up schooled in second-wave feminism so when I thought about porn, I thought about it as an instrument of female oppression. I thought it was degrading. I thought it contributed to created unrealistic sexual fantasies (!) and stifling expectations of women (and girls). I thought it was all Playboy, peroxide and pneumatic breasts all the time.
That was before the internet. Or at least before I discovered the internet.
Often Teh Internets are blamed for the erosion of community and is conceived of as an isolating, fracturing device. And sure, it can be that. But it also allows tiny communities to coalesce around ideas and inclinations.
And that means it can be a community-building device and a salve to people with specific and particular interests – interests that might not be shared by many, or any, people in their physical communities.
As an example, we could be talking about afficionados of sculpture created by the Mpong people. In any given place, there might be one or two passionate wannabe patrons; worldwide there could be thousands. Teh Internets can connect those collectors, and, in so doing, provide a way for twelve artisans in a remote village to continue to survive and thrive and make their art.
Happy sigh.
Or we could be talking about people who’ve got a unique sexual kink. Maybe they already feel ostracized or in the closet; maybe finding out that there is porn for their thing and other people into it makes them feel less alone. And gets them off.
Happy sigh.
Still, my thinking about porn – especially mainstream porn – is tangled. Even though women usually make more money in porn than men, I can see how the porn industry benefits from, and contributes to, the systematic marginalization of women. I can see how it might warp the way young straight men think about sex and women. I can see how porn might be where young people learn about sex without realizing that what they’re really watching is a version of sex organized around camera angles and showing the goods.
And at the same time I’m a fiercely sexual creature who decries the limitations other people place on our personal expressions of sexuality.
Still, until recently, I’d never actually watched a full-length porn movie.
That changed about a year ago when I told my Gentleman Caller at the time that I’d never watched porn. He asked me what I thought I would like to see. I thought about it and said, I think I’d like to see people who look like us.
He knew just the thing, and brought me a bunch of DVDs – all made by the same company and featuring the same male performer – he thought I’d like.
He was right. I liked them.
I liked them so much that I called the guy who made them – who just so happened to be the guy performing in them - and asked him for an interview. We chatted for nearly two hours.
Right after we hung up, my then-man called me and asked me what I was up to. I said, oh, I just got off the phone with CJ Wright.
He said, CJ Wright?! As in the guy in the porn I just gave you?
I said, Yes.
He said, Only you, Kelly Diels. Only you watch porn for the the first time at the age of 36 and then call the porn star up.
And below is the story of what happened when – and after – I called CJ Wright.
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2. Big Girls Don’t Bang. Oh Wait, They Do! Just Ask CJ Wright (I Did)
CJ Wright is a liar. He’s got to be, because despite my personal experiences – which, unfortunately, I often assume are the exception rather than the norm – nothing in our North American culture or mainstream media has prepared me for his romantic and sexual preferences.
He’s ridiculously hot. He’s got abs that that look like a river rock bed after the water has fled, an ass as taut two soccer balls and a mischievious, meant-to-seduce smile. And I suspect he’s got a few dollars in his pocket, too. His Van Nuys-based business is doing well.
So CJ’s young, good looking and very likely earns more than six figures. In Los Angeles. This is significant. David Spade once exclaimed that in LA (or anywhere) any guy – young, old, ugly, handsome, awkward, smooth – who earns more than a hundred grand can have a honey or a wannabe bunny on his arm.
But the blue-eyed blondes weighing in at 120 lbs or less, with 14 of those pounds in silicon implants? Those California girls from everywhere except California?
Not for him, CJ says. He likes ‘em big.
Or so he says. He may be young (he’s in his late twenties but asked me not to name the number) but he’s built a thriving, profitable and unique business in less than a year. He’s a savvy business man. He knows a hot ‘n heavy niche market when he sees it.
CJ, you see, is a pornographer. After years of performing in mainstream straight porn, he started his own company producing, directing, and performing in porn flicks featuring fat chicks (definitely NOT SAFE FOR WORK). And in an industry widely acknowledged to be in a bit of downturn – soft – right now, he’s going hard at it.
So of course he says he likes to pull fat women. They’re his business, after all, as are the men who like to fuck them. Best not to alienate your suppliers or your customers.
“No, really,” he insists. “Big girls have always been my thing. When I turned nineteen and was finally allowed into the Adult Video Store, that’s what I was looking for. Big girl porn. And even when I was working in mainstream porn, what I wanted to watch, myself, was big girl porn. And when I took a look at what was out there, it didn’t do much for me. The production values were wack.”
“I know!” I exclaim. “Whenever I watch low-budget or amateur porn, for example, I’m so turned off by the bad decor – the horrible hotel rooms, the messy bedrooms, the filthy carpet – that I can’t get off at all.”
CJ knows exactly what I’m talking about because offering better than that is his angle. “Yeah,” he says, “the sets are bad and the guys in most BBW porn…well they don’t really look like they like what they’re doing. They aren’t really into big girls. And, let’s be honest, not many of those guys look like me. I work out, and I take care of my body, I’m not out clubbing and partying, I don’t drink or smoke…”
“What about sex?” I ask. “This is something I wonder about porn performers – what is sex like in your personal life, when you do it for a job? Are there days you come home from work, and your woman is all hot ‘n bothered, and you’re like, baby I did that all day. No thanks.”
“Well,” he says, “I only fuck on camera.”
“What?!”
“Yes. I want my movies to be intense…I want people to feel what I’m feeling. So I wait until I find a chick I really want to bang, and I make her my girlfriend for the day. Hair, nails, clothes, shoes, makeup – I take care of all of that. So what you see in my movies, it’s real. I only fuck chicks I’m really into. And then when we fuck, we’re both really feeling it.
“And my audience notices,” he continues. “I hear things like CJ, you and _____ must really be a couple. You must be fucking off-screen. The chemistry between the two of you is HOT.”
That’s his goal, CJ tells me, to make personal porn and make porn personal.
And he’s doing that.
His movies really are him and he’s a young, straight male on the rise. Sometimes the clothes who chooses for the female performers seem more about his vision of ‘hot’ than about what makes the women look hot. (But they’re waaaaaaay better than most BBW porn.) The sex is still porn sex, more about docking more than fucking. And the movies that have preambles involving acting are all about him – his dominance, desirability and business acumen. They’re about the money, baby. He’s getting his shoes polished, or interviewing a woman who wants to be his personal assistant…and then fucking the shit out of his supplicants. (Yes, please!) The threesomes between women seem robotic – none of them seem over-the-top into each other, and the threesomes with two men and a woman are more about plowing the chick than they are about getting her off. Most heterosexual porn is like that, really.
But here’s the thing: he’s having fun in his films, and it shows.
CJ is something not a lot of porn performers are: he’s likeable. During our interview I came to like him lots and wow, do I like watching him fuck. His fucking is an athletic event. His films contain unguarded, un-pornified moments that liquefy me. Moments when he grins at the woman he’s fucking, or they laugh, or he kisses her so real it makes her smile with satisfaction. Most porn is serious, so those lighter, sweeter moments are truly…sexy. I watch some immediately after getting off the phone. I get off. It is good.
Later, I write him something nice about how great it has been to talk to him and how much I appreciated his time. We text back and forth about my upcoming trip to Vegas. He implies he’d be willing to drive from Van Nuys to Las Vegas to meet me. And then I get a text from him. “Any time you’re ready.”
I’m giddy like the geeky girl asked to prom by The Hot Guy. After all, the whole reason I interviewed CJ Wright in the first place is because I like pretty-fat-girl-banging-hot-black-guy porn. He’s the hot black guy. I’m the pretty fat girl. We should totally fuck.
Alas, it is not to be. There’s an insurmountable obstacle between us and The Fucking: he only fucks ON camera, and I only fuck OFF…camera, that is.
But I was tempted (what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!) and sometimes I still think about how much I’d like to sex CJ Wright, who says he likes fat chicks (and has a whole bunch of films to prove it) only fucks women he really likes, and apparently wanted to fuck me. True story.
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3. LadyPorn Day and My PORN t-shirt
Perhaps this is not how every woman’s introduction to porn ends, but that’s how it ended (and started) for me – with much unfilmable love for CJ Wright.
And, by the way, this piece is part of #ladyporn day instigated by sex journalist Rachel RabbitWhite. Provocateurs like Betty Dodson and Cindy Gallop are participating. And me. Pinch me, I’m dreaming.
PS I wouldn’t mind at all if you bought my PORN t-shirt. You can do that here.
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epic post alert.
This post is so long that it requires a table of contents.
Love is Ugly
Announcing the TEN winners of the Red Shoe Blogger Digital Strategy Sessions
Check out the Love Sparks Blogging Festival
One More Thing (for everyone who wanted to win a Red Shoe Blogger Digital Strategy Session)
PS I love you
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Love is Ugly
There’s a dark side to generosity. Most of us (one hopes) are taught to give to those “less fortunate than ourselves”. That’s noble, altruistic, charitable…
and hierarchical.
We’re taught a one-sided charity. We’re taught that the rewards reside in giving, in being privileged enough to give; and that magnamity and magnificence flow in one direction: from the offeror, with the offer.
For a long time I believed that to love was to give and I bathed my beloveds in acts of kindness and charity.
But I rarely, if ever, asked for help, even when I desperately needed it. Unless I had no choice.
Late one afternoon I was stranded on a bridge that, just moments earlier, was the scene of a horrific, multi-car, fatal accident. The bridge was shut down. I wouldn’t be going anywhere for hours. And the daycare closed in thirty minutes.
And I was sick about having to call my friend for help. She’d have to drop everything, pack up her two kids, and dash to the daycare right now and then she’d have to feed all of them dinner. Such an imposition.
I had no choice. I had to ask. And I worried about it all the way home.
And almost every day was a day like that. I was a newly separated single working mama of two kids under the age of four. I worked, I took care of the girls, and when I wasn’t at the office I was essentially housebound. I had no after-work-hours childcare. I had no money for babysitters. I did, however, have family and friends living within a four block radius of my home.
But I couldn’t ask for help.
Because my defense – my shield against the failure of being a single mama in the midst of married coupledom – was to be seamless. Perfect. Superwoman. Need-free.
And at the same time, I was generous. I’d take my friend’s son for the weekend when she was working night shifts at the hospital. I’d offer advice. (I love to offer advice.) I’d write projects for free. I’d work extra hours and not bill for the overtime. And I loved doing that. I loved – and love – it when people let me in to their lives.
But if anyone offered me what I offered them, I was wildly uncomfortable.
I couldn’t let anyone in unless everything was perfect – which meant I had to keep everyone at arm’s length. Which meant, in times of trouble, I retreated. Disappeared. Cut contact.
Then, last October – after a year of a lot of growing up – I got sick. I collapsed. I was hemorraghing on the bathroom floor at 4am.
And at that moment, flat on the tile, bleeding, in overwhelming pain and on the verge of passing out, I still worried about asking for help. Even calling an ambulance seemed a touch histrionic.
But I couldn’t faint on the floor for my four year old to find me in a pool of blood.
So I called my sister and my friend Heather. Heather drove me to the hospital and my sister scooped up the girls and carted them home. Heather stayed beside the emergency room bed until 7am when I convinced her to go.
After she left I bawled hysterically and unceasingly until noon.
I sobbed through exams and needles and tests and a nurse stroking my arm saying I know honey, I know.
I cried because I didn’t want this to be happening. I cried because I didn’t want to be there. I cried because I was alone and in pain and I needed help and I sent help away.
And the woman in the bed next to me bawled all day, too. She’d just left the hospital four days earlier after a four week stay. She’d had part of her intestine removed. She had two little kids at home. She had a business she was tending to on the phone. I’d hear her make very composed calls organizing her employees to cover her absence and then I’d hear her sob with her entire body. I heard the doctor tell her she had an infection at the surgical site and pneumonia and still I heard her beg him to send her home. He left to consult with another doctor, and I heard her cry, hard, and say oh god I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here.
We sobbed and spoke in concert. That was what I saying and praying too. I didn’t want to be there, and part of my grief and hysteria came from the not wanting to be where I was.
Naturally. I was in the ER. No one wants to be in the ER.
And somewhere between the pain and the percocet I realized: most of my emotional anguish comes from fighting what is.
I was in the ER. I was sick. I needed surgery. Nothing would change those immediate circumstances. I was fighting the wrong dragon. I was fighting reality.
Instead, what I ought to do was fight to be okay, right now, right where I was.
I told myself to accept the pain, to breathe, to feel every twinge of my battling body. I tuned in instead of trying to block it out. I marvelled at my own resilience. I suffered; I hurt; but I wasn’t fighting myself. I was fighting for myself.
After hours and hours, the hospital sent me home. No space in the Operating Room. No beds. No room in the inn.Surgery would have to wait until tomorrow.
And when I got to my house - I still felt ashamed and guilty for needing my sister to ferry me home – I was alone. My girls were safely ensconced at their father’s house.
And this time, even though it wasn’t an emergency, even though I knew could get through the night alone, I asked for help. I told my loverloverman – who, at that point, was my former loverloverman and to whom I wasn’t speaking – this:
I’m sad and scared and I’m having surgery tomorrow.
He said, I’ll be right there.
And he was.
And, after I hadn’t let him see or speak to me for a month, he climbed in bed with me, kissed me and stroked my face. He gazed into my eyes adoringly and told me, as I lay wan, sweaty and shaking with pain, that I was beautiful. He held me and caressed me and hugged me and kissed me all night and every time I turned to him, he was awake. He didn’t want me to be alone for a moment.
He made what should have been the worst night of my life the sweetest. I was awash in his love and protection and stunned that he desired me even in my most bedraggled, unsexy, pain-wracked, suffering state.
And later, while I was in the Operating Room, he took my car and cleaned it inside and out. I know he was just trying to do something – anything – sweet for me.
I had surgery. I recovered. And while I was recovering, my man-who-wasn’t-my-man, friends, family and even my children’s father had my back unreservedly. Enthusiastically.
When I thanked Heather for her 4am service, she said: “I’m your person.”
When I thanked my children’s father, he said, “You’re the mother of my children. We’re a team.”
When I thanked my sister, she said, “Of course.”
When I thanked F, he said “You didn’t have to go through this alone.”
And, much like the realization that sliced through the pain and the percocet, a new understanding – a harrowing, of-the-marrow knowledge – cut through my fog of mortification at being dependant and unable to stride through emergencies unassisted.
Love isn’t only an offer. Love is reception and invitation. It means being able to receive. Truly loving and inviting people in to your life means letting them see you in all your glorious misery, in the midst of dirty dishes and unfolded laundry and sometimes pain and pools of blood.
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and all of this is to say thank you to
- Meggy Wang, The Novelist’s Hubris
- Matthew Stillman, Stillman Says
- Linda Eaves, Don’t Go Home with Him
- Sara Blackthorne, Forest of Stories
- Tessa Zeng, Experiencing Revolution
- Amy Friend, Cypress Sun Jewelry
- Marianne Elliott, Zen Peacekeeper
- Jenny Alexander, The Painted Lily
- Lindsey Mead, A Design So Vast
- Jasmine Lamb, All is Listening
for lovingly inviting me into their virtual houses. Yes, darlings, you won a Red Shoe Blogger Digital Strategy Session.
(Expect an e-mail from me today to line up our schedules.)
And thank you to my friends/judges Desiree Adaway, Tara Gentile and Amanda Farough for working through the long list of candidates and making the selections.
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PS Did you see the image at the beginning of the post? That’s the badge for the Love Sparks Blogging Festival by Jasmine Lamb (All is Listening). Check it out.
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Oh, One More Thing…
to EVERYONE who commented on my “this I know” piece,
If you want a Red Shoe Blogger digital strategy session, let’s do it like this:
pay what you can.
Really.
The usual price is $100 per session, but since you loved me up, I want to love you back. Tell me what works for you and IT’S ON, BABY.
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Finally:
lovelovelove to you on Valentine’s Day.
And always.
George Orwell hates me and my dying metaphors and that is fine by moi because I did not love Animal Farm.
I wanted it to be Charlotte’s Web but it was not. I also did not appreciate Lord of the Flies with its pig-hunting and Piggy-haunting. For all of these reasons, I boycotted the movie Babe. Our cultural imagination is whipsawed by conflict and confusion about the essence and symbolism of pork – vulnerable, sunburnable pink proxies for humanity? Or a tasty breakfast side dish? – and frankly I just can’t be moved even though the goddamn wolf keeps blowing my house down.
Don’t even get me started on wolves. I may have to run with them.
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The lessons?
1. When George Orwell is not writing about pigs, he’s my dude. His rant on dying metaphors is the most important thing I’ve ever learned about writing:
A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically “dead” (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a “rift,” for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. (emphasis mine)
2. Writing is a way of thinking and the inventiveness of your metaphors mirrors the agility of your argument.
3. Language is a raucous, celebratory crowd of soccer hooligans. It can go good or very, very bad and the moment before the crowd turns is thrilling. Take the risk. Riot.
4. Some attempts at wild-ride writing are precious, affected, and immature. That’s okay. Juvenile is part of the process. Sometimes it’s the juiciest part of the process.
5. Just ask Dave Eggers and Douglas Coupland (both of whom doth rocketh).
6. Go play.
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Sunday School for Sentences will be a sixteen-part series. Missed one? Here they are:
Prologue: God, Sex and Dazzling Sentences
- Sunday School for Sentences #1: Explain the Expected in Unexpected Ways
- Sunday School for Sentences #2: The (Textual) Reverse Cowgirl
- Sunday School for Sentences #3: Object Lessons (from Kanye West and JD Salinger)
- Sunday School for Sentences #4: How to Give Good Quote
- Sunday School For Sentences #5: Why You Should Write Bad Poetry
- Sunday School for Sentences #6: Two Damn Fine Writing Tips
- Sunday School for Sentences #7: There Are No Magic Words
- Sunday School for Sentences #8: How To Execute a Climax or Series of Climaxes. I’m talking About Writing. Mostly.
- Sunday School for Sentences #9: Thread the Grommets, Lace the Corset, Feed the Rabbits
- Sunday School For Sentences #10 – Work It
- Sunday School for Sentences #11: The Pigs In Space Edition
- Sunday School for Sentences #12: Screw SEO. I Write (Wackadoo Titles) for PEOPLE, Not Search Engines. And So Should You.
- Sunday School for Sentences #13: How to Write an Intimate Cosmology of Cheesecake, Cheesecake Shots (or not) and Shoplifting
- Sunday School for Sentences #14: What Picasso And Dave Chappelle Know about Writing. For Realz.
- Generosity is the antidote to (non-clinical) depression.
- It is also the antidote to stuck.
- There is no stuck.
- Learn the art of the reframe. It is a life-saving device.
- There is an invisible border between the strategic, necessary reframe and spin. If you find that fence, walk it like a cat: with dignity, insouciance and caution.
- Fear is inevitable. Make room for it. It isn’t a hurdle. It’s fuel.
- Your value is not your price. My self-worth is independent of my fee.
- When selling your art, practice regret-free pricing. How much is a painting worth? The number that will not make you sorry to sell it.
- When selling your time, practice resentment-free pricing. Your fee should ensure you won’t resent the person with whom you’re working.
- The client who chooses you because you’re the cheapest will make you regret your existence, wonder if you’re any good at what you do, and question whether you want to stay in business. Say no. Eat a month of rice rather than making nice.
- Excellence, not perfection.
- Business models are iterative. You’ll probably ditch your business model and business plan three months into the game. Opportunities will define your business model. Your response will define your success.
- Ditto for brand and websites. They’re living entities. They don’t have to be finished when you launch. In fact, they can’t be. Don’t wait ’til they’re perfect to do your thing. That’s your insecurity talking and insecurity is the pause button of human machines.
- Brand is an ethic.
- The urge to create is divine. It’s a telephone line to God.
- Love. Worship. Create. Share.
- There’s no such thing as sacrifice. Every trade you make – for love, for art, for your children, for your business, yourself – is service to that which you love.
- Self-promotion is the service you perform for your art. It isn’t icky, brazen or distasteful. It is service to yourself and the world.
- Marketing is a creative opportunity and an extension of your art. Make it juicy. Enjoy.
- Over-prepare.
- “You” is a relief, an invitation, and a competitive advantage. Business is always personal.
- Love your people, in life and business, because there is no distinction.
- Everything I know about business I learned from love.
- And blogging.
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Guess what, pumpkin? I’m giving away a total of ten (one session each to ten people) FREE Red Shoe Blogger Digital Strategy Sessions (one hour consults via Skype about your blog, your platform, the art of self-promotion, and how to blog and write mo’ better).
Want one?
Then, my darling, let me know in the comments. A panel of three bloggers (I haven’t yet decided who they are but I will by the end of the day) will select the winners and I’ll announce them on Valentine’s Day.
ain’t no shame baby do your thang
just make sure you’re ahead of the game
- Missy Elliott, Work It
Usually in Sunday School for Sentences, I preach to you about how to improve your writing one sentence at a time.
I do that because I believe live, luminous writing is microspopic; and, proceeding from that belief, I endeavour to provide you with tiny, almost instantly implementable practical tips and techniques. It’s all part of our – yours and mine, Dear Writer – joint quest to create some holy shit writing.
This fine Sunday, however, I’m going to talk to you about your life, your finances, and your job.
Because how we organize our lives, pay our bills and feel about our jobs has a direct impact on how much and how well we write.
Often my working relationship with a client starts like this:
Person sends me a heartfelt e-mail about how she loves to write, desires in blood-coursing, limbic way to be a better writer, is in fact a pretty good writer, but still – and here I envision a shamefaced, eye-contact-avoiding, imaginary rock kicking shuffle – has a job and therefore is not a ‘real’ writer or artist of any valour or validity.
And then I talk him off the mortification ledge and convince him that he is a real writer right now, or will be, if he just starts writing.
It happens in phone calls. In consultations. In person. The people I work with are consistently embarassed to be employed, as though having a job is an affliction or a sexually transmitted infection (which, in my opinion, there should be a lot less shame around, but that’s another post and possibly another site altogether) or one of those not-ideal conditions in the way of creation.
It blows my mind.
It means we’ve bought a lie.
<——- Do we really believe this?
I don’t.
I’ve thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and I have a theory upon which I shall expound in Red Shoe Blogger. (I’m writing a chapter called “Ain’t No Shame in the 9-5″ about what this shame means and how to trump it.)
In the meantime, however, here’s what I know and I want you to know too:
Having a job – especially a boring, unfulfilling, unchallenging one - can be the single best thing to ever happen to you as an artist.
Because having your bills paid is an ideal creation for creativity. Being able to eat, answer your phone (both because it hasn’t been cut off and because collection agents aren’t calling), maintain adequate shelter and otherwise breathe easy because the day-to-day keeping-of-shit together isn’t in question WILL HELP YOU WRITE.
Dear Writer, I rarely use capitalization. Infer what you will from my lapse.
As I first mentioned in the early days of my writing/blogging career – and I penned it in the most genteel, understated and discreet fashion - when I am broke, I am stressed. Stress is the financial version of heartbreak and when I’m in the midst of both, I go to bed for days/weeks/months at a time. In these times, regular bathing is an accomplishment. When the bar is this low, no creation occurs.
And so, it seems to me, that receiving a regular paycheque – aka ‘having a jayohbee’ – is almost as essential to a writer’s productivity as are laptops and internet connections. (Paper and pen is conspicuously absent from this toolkit, I know, but I’m really that new-school. I don’t even have a pen. When I need to sign something, I borrow a felt marker from my daughter, who also doesn’t have a pen.)
Having a boring job is even better for a writer. It means you can save all your thinking and passion for your art. It means you’ll be desperate to find an outlet for your creativity and your writing will flourish. It means you’ll have to be disciplined about finding time every day to write because you’re conscious that if you let this hour get away from you, you won’t be able to make it up tomorrow…because you have to go to work.
And so, Dear Writer, having a job doesn’t mean you’re not a real writer. It means you’re creating the conditions by which you can successfully create.
Because here’s the historical truth about good writing and great authors:
Real writers have jobs or they live off women. Ask Hemingway. He did both.
image by RusherVision, quote by Chuck Palahniuk (click here to return to your place in this post)
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Sunday School for Sentences will be a sixteen-part series. Missed one? Here they are:
Prologue: God, Sex and Dazzling Sentences
- Sunday School for Sentences #1: Explain the Expected in Unexpected Ways
- Sunday School for Sentences #2: The (Textual) Reverse Cowgirl
- Sunday School for Sentences #3: Object Lessons (from Kanye West and JD Salinger)
- Sunday School for Sentences #4: How to Give Good Quote
- Sunday School For Sentences #5: Why You Should Write Bad Poetry
- Sunday School for Sentences #6: Two Damn Fine Writing Tips
- Sunday School for Sentences #7: There Are No Magic Words
- Sunday School for Sentences #8: How To Execute a Climax or Series of Climaxes. I’m talking About Writing. Mostly.
- Sunday School for Sentences #9: Thread the Grommets, Lace the Corset, Feed the Rabbits
- Sunday School For Sentences #10 – Work It
- Sunday School for Sentences #11: The Pigs In Space Edition
- Sunday School for Sentences #12: Screw SEO. I Write (Wackadoo Titles) for PEOPLE, Not Search Engines. And So Should You.
- Sunday School for Sentences #13: How to Write an Intimate Cosmology of Cheesecake, Cheesecake Shots (or not) and Shoplifting
- Sunday School for Sentences #14: What Picasso And Dave Chappelle Know about Writing. For Realz.
Sunday School for Sentences will be a sixteen-part series. Missed one? Here they are:
Prologue: God, Sex and Dazzling Sentences
- Sunday School for Sentences #1: Explain the Expected in Unexpected Ways
- Sunday School for Sentences #2: The (Textual) Reverse Cowgirl
- Sunday School for Sentences #3: Object Lessons (from Kanye West and JD Salinger)
- Sunday School for Sentences #4: How to Give Good Quote
- Sunday School For Sentences #5: Why You Should Write Bad Poetry
- Sunday School for Sentences #6: Two Damn Fine Writing Tips
- Sunday School for Sentences #7: There Are No Magic Words
- Sunday School for Sentences #8: How To Execute a Climax or Series of Climaxes. I’m talking About Writing. Mostly.
- Sunday School for Sentences #9: Thread the Grommets, Lace the Corset, Feed the Rabbits
- Sunday School For Sentences #10 – Work It
- Sunday School for Sentences #11: The Pigs In Space Edition
- Sunday School for Sentences #12: Screw SEO. I Write (Wackadoo Titles) for PEOPLE, Not Search Engines. And So Should You.
- Sunday School for Sentences #13: How to Write an Intimate Cosmology of Cheesecake, Cheesecake Shots (or not) and Shoplifting
- Sunday School for Sentences #14: What Picasso And Dave Chappelle Know about Writing. For Realz.
I’m truly madly deeply in love and that love is rolling around my tongue at every moment, begging to be expressed. In fact the lovewords aren’t even asking permission: they’re leaping out of my mouth as soon as I open it.
Paradox. I’m a writer, words are my thang and so I should have stunning and heartwrenching metaphors at my disposal, but all I can think to say is this:
IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.
And that’s how I feel about all the love, praise and support I received for in concert with fear.
To Amanda Farough of Violet Minded for making the design and typography of the chapter feel like a “stripped” and “naked” poem (just as I asked),
To Teresea Deak of Social Butterfly Solutions for the emergency formatting and fiddling with MS-Word,
To my loverloverman (F) for givin’ me good lovin’, great conversation, flaming red hair and unflagging encouragement, all of which help me create,
(because of course fabulous hair is an ideal condition for creativity)
To Lola, for not crying and screaming and protesting mornings all week last week (!) and then checking in with me, daily, on the way to daycare, “I was really nice this morning, wasn’t I?”,
To Sophie, for cleaning her room unprompted (!) and, when prompted (sometimes abruptly), fetching her sister juice, granola bars, barbies and plutonium without complaint,
To Ashley Ambirge, for running my guest post (wackadoo title and all) for her Fear Exposed series and loving me up so thoroughly I almost required nicotine,
To everyone who tweeted my chapter, shared it on Facebook, signed up for info about Red Shoe Blogger: The Book, wrote a blog post response, sent me a soulful e-mail message or DM’d me some adoration,
and to you, for reading it,
thankyouthankyouthankyou.
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