Coming Back to Writing: An essay

In which MC Guimond has the audacity to compare the writing process with sex. Caution: Very erotic! 18+ required to view!



Coming back to writing after being too far away for too long is like coming back to a devoted lover’s body. The terrain is known like the lines in your palm, or the feel of your teeth as you rub your tongue against their curves and ridges. You are not a stranger in a strange land. You walk not alone but hand in hand with the Muse who may, according to whim, skinny-dip in the soul’s bacchanalian pond and splash frantically for attention, or simply whisper into your ear, or withdraw into silence, awaiting fresh germination. My Muse happens to be female, clad in a thin negligee of night but however yours is imagined there is peace beyond all understanding in the lips you love to kiss, in the words you love to play with.

Both Muse and writer yield to each other’s desires like the respective flesh of two lovers. The tenderness of certain sentences are caresses that light up the mind’s dark sky so that the inner eye can clearly see the way. Something within becomes aroused. The heart beats wild and words like stars form new, strange constellations. Love is made in the usual way, and after the miraculous pump and grind is finished, and authentic words are splashed on the page thick and raw one sits and beholds and smiles. But more than the quick ejaculation of words is required to produce full-grown literary art unless one gives the creative ooze a hard look, reshapes and redirects its course again and again before it dries on the page as immature work, and then if lucky, one senses the shadowy outlines of an embryo, a thumb stuck in a mouth or the black ink of an eye hole. Then, after a sleep-depriving gestation of one revision after another, after morning sickness and pre-par tem despair, your best finished work, your child, is born. And then you set the child of letters and sweat free to sing or cry in the world, and set your sights upon further arousal, further pumping and grinding, reshaping and redirecting, so that more best finished work, more children can be made. In this way the writer’s world is filled, in this way the writer gives back, first to the creative community, second, in a small yet significant way, to the collective imagination of the species.

Through good times and bad both writer and Muse are there for each other. In this aspect the relationship resembles an enduring, healthy marriage. Both give, both take. One must read well and practice well the age old craft. Lust gives way to quiet courtship. When separation occurs, each party--writer and Muse--patiently waits, gives support and space to the other because the relationship comprises a third party, and its needs are paramount. One should bring the Muse the equivalent of chocolate or roses; a clean, orderly room perhaps, with a nice desk and comfy chair, fine, fast-gliding pens, great books to devour, a window overlooking a park, a sea, a brick wall or anything as long as it supports submersion in daydream, and of course, intervals of solitude. After such wooing the fiery tongues of words are sure to probe the writer’s soul with hot kisses and divine music.

The writer is an alchemist and a fairy godmother. Kneeling words of iron dream of being tapped by the writer’s wand; and thereby rise, transmuted to words of gold. Words yearn to be written into new voluptuousness, to perfume their bodies and adorn their tresses with flowers, and it’s through the writer that they can dream of such ardor. Something more seductive than moons or stars, angels or demons is what a magical fragment of language can dream of becoming. Through the throat of a poeticized night the night’s darkness can be lightened. Language empathically rendered, whispering endearments and understandings into the reader’s ear can save a life. The vital and vitalizing embrace of words honestly and beautifully honed is never false. A poem can comfort the reader through a lifetime of sorrow. A story can be a friend as friends come and go. Sometimes but sometimes not the alchemist transmutes the self, the fairy godmother’s wish is granted, the writer is saved.

So we return to the word, the poem, the story because often society’s general spectacle is too dark, and no longer feeds us what we need. Popular culture holds aloft a platter of Twinkies. We eat with reluctance and guilt, ever and uncomfortably aware that what we truly desire is offered only on the menu of the heart. Requesting water, the culture crams sponges of vinegar in our mouths and pierces the Muse with spears. We‘ve all known this taste of alienation, this lack of sustenance which leaves us bewildered, bitter or simply empty. But the writer can re-invent taste, can reinvent culture, can reinvent human companions in the transformative marriage of art and craft. In translating the heart’s secret hieroglyphs the writer can record wisdom beyond that of the conscious self.

So let’s come back to writing. Because we can conduct strange orgies of words. Because Satyrs prowl down the paragraph in search of nymphet sentences. Because the genitals of vowels and the lips of consonants swell and moan our secret names across the page. Because we can write new moons and new suns into the night and thereby see our lives with greater clarity. With the stroking of keys or the flourish of a pen we can drive the money changers from the temple, upset expectations, make assumptions do headstands. The dwarf gets to be king, the hunchback gets the girl, the bag lady gets to sing like an angel and dance around in a queen’s crown.