How I Got Angry

by Annabeth Leong

About halfway through writing Untouched, I realized that my hero, Eli, had become my villain. I don't mean villain in the cutesy antihero sense, where he's still the appealing center of the story. I mean he had become the obstacle to my protagonist's happiness and I hated him for it.

When I planned the book, I knew I didn't want a happily ever after ending for Eli and Celia (my protagonist). I wanted to explore the sort of relationship that needs to come to an end but teaches both people a lot in the process—the sort of relationship that a person talks about later with a wistful sigh, followed by a shudder of relief.

But at first I had an idealized vision of Eli. When I imagined the goodbye at the end, I thought Celia would tearfully admit that she just couldn't give him what he needed. I pictured her slinking off in hopes that she might someday learn to love, feeling grateful for the little bit she'd experienced with Eli.

I'm really glad that's not the book I ended up writing. About a third of the way through, I got in touch with Celia's anger—and therefore my own.

The thing is, Eli and Celia have a deal. They're both looking for a relationship outside the mainstream, and up front they agree to certain terms. Eli says he wants a companion and voyeur, a woman who wants to savor his conquests alongside him. He wants to be free to fuck as many women as he wants, and he's certain that monogamy isn't for him. Celia wants to express herself sexually with a companion with no pressure to touch or be touched. She wants to masturbate with an audience, and she's happy about the idea of watching him with other people.

I remember the day I wrote the scene where they make that deal. That sweet, exhilarating feeling of falling in love coursed through my veins and rubbed off on me by association. I went for a walk and sun poured down on me. I remember cherry blossoms floating through the air, though I'm pretty sure that didn't really happen.

But you probably see where this is going. The center of Untouched is the archetype of the doomed deal. The moment Celia thinks she's found happiness is the moment Eli changes the terms. He tells her that he needs to touch her after all. And Celia gets angry:

She flailed for more words, afraid now that if she let him speak he would say the unthinkable. But it was impossible that falling in love with her could make him want to say that. He fucking knew better.

Celia said, "I know my limitations, so it's never made sense to be possessive. I don't want to doom you to celibacy, Eli. I like that I'm part of what you want—maybe even the most important part, that's sort of nice—but I don't have to be everything. I don't have to try to do things that I can't do."

"Celia..." Eli broke off and hid his face in the comforter. "Celia..."

She felt a pang of deep regret. "Eli, please. Don't fucking say it."

"I have to."

She wrenched herself out of bed. The world was shattering around her. "God damn it, Eli. This is the center of fucking everything. You can't ask me for..."

He lifted his head. His eyes were as wide and frightened as a small child's. In that moment, the smooth, self-possessed man that she had known and fallen for seemed to have disappeared. His jaw trembled, and she sensed he was near tears. "Celia, I need to touch you. Please. Even a little. Even on the tips of your fingertips or your knee or anywhere that you can take it. Can you give that to me? Please."

She crossed her arms under her breasts. Tears glittered in her eyes, but they felt hard. She wanted to throw them at him like so many daggers. "Fuck you, Eli. Fuck you."

Before I actually wrote Untouched, I described Eli with a lot of sympathy. Celia's very patient lover was trying to explore how to help her tolerate touch.

Then the book woke me into a different reality. Why should Eli be the one to set the terms and change them when he wants? Celia was perfectly clear up front about what she could and couldn't do. Who the hell did he think he was? He thought love gave him a right to make these demands of her? How could that sort of violation possibly be the fruit of love?

The more I wrote, the angrier I got. Because it was damned uncomfortable as a writer to deny this man. Celia eventually holds the line (though she spends a while trying to bend herself to his wishes), and I was scared to death of letting her. I was sure my publisher would force me to change my ending (but Sweetmeats Press is fabulous, and Joe did not). I pictured reviewers complaining about Celia being an unreasonable bitch to this charismatic man who loves her and just wants a little touch. Celia had plenty of conflict, and she shared it with me—more truly than for anything else I've written, I struggled alongside her.

I'm ashamed to admit how hard it was for me to see my own main character's point of view—one that claims ownership of her own body and sexuality. As I started to understand her, I got mad at Eli, mad at myself, mad at the people in my life who've made me feel like my own needs and desires are things I should get over. And there have been so very many people who prodded and coerced and insisted and belittled. Or outright abused me and my trust. Many people have talked about the intensity of Untouched, but that's because Celia's sexuality is under siege. As I wrote that, I realized that this sprang from my own sense of being besieged.

I started writing erotica because I was interested in talking honestly about sex. How embarrassing that after five years of thinking I was doing that, after being featured in Best [Insert Sex Act Here] who knows how many times, this book showed me how closed off I've been to the true things about myself.

I've written here before that I think women are taught to perform sex, not to claim it and experience it for themselves. For so much of my life, I saw sex acts from the other person's perspective—how was I making them feel? I saw my whole sexual imagination and consciousness from outside, too, as a thing to be judged and controlled. Over the last several years, I've confronted a lot of my own taboos and explored in my life and in my writing what I actually like.

It was only by writing Celia, though, that I really got out of the passenger seat and into the driver's seat. It was that character that made me really see what it's like to be at the center of one's own sex life, and writing her was an act of defiance.

And now that my anger has been unleashed, I'm not the same writer or person.

It's hard for me to talk about Untouched, because the things I had to say were best said in the book, but writing it had a major effect on my actual sex life and I'm still dealing with the fallout. I found out a lot of truth, and I discovered a lot of rage, and I can't go on as I was before.

As a writer, I flailed a lot after finishing this book. I've always included subversive elements in my work, but I want to find a way to stop apologizing for what I have to say. And I'm angry at the distortions caused by common expectations in the industry. I was never a fan of straight rich white "alpha males," but oh my god now I really want to burn that down.

I don't want our corner of the literary world to be defanged and fitted neatly into the mainstream. I remember Best American Erotica 1996, which I wrote about in my first post for the Grip, and how shocking and uncomfortable—and vital—it was. I don't want to be reduced to toothless blog tours in which I'm counseled not to alienate readers by saying controversial things. Marketing and I have always been uncomfortable bedfellows, but now I'm feeling especially concerned about letting market values infect and corrupt my work.

So, this is what anger is for. It makes it impossible for me to put up with what I'm supposed to put up with and gives me the strength to step into uncomfortable territory. I've had a tough six months, but I'm damned proud of Untouched, and I think I owe it to myself and my readers to continue pursuing authenticity, without compromise and without retreat.

Authenticity and the Writer

There is a difference between writing "other" for the other and writing other for those like you. I was considering this notion of writing other-- writing from the perspective of someone who is not like me-- and realized I haven't done it all that often when the audience is able to authenticate my writing. Regardless of the topic, it's scary to have an expert say, "You got it wrong." Being told that I got it wrong by someone who lives and breathes the life I'm writing is not only scary, it's embarrassing and shameful. It's an insult to the "other" that I am writing about. So perhaps that's why I don't do it very often.

I have written from the male perspective dozens of times, but I have written it for women. In romance and erotic romance, the audience is primarily women. Writing alpha males comes from a place in me that likes the idea of alpha males but would likely run screaming if I were in a relationship with one. On the page, my male characters are written with an audience in mind-- and that audience is me, not a guy who served twenty years in the army and rides a motorcycle, like the character I'm writing. That guy--reading about the fictionalized version of himself--might laugh at my portrayal. I'm too scared to ask, to be honest.

Which brings me to the point of writing "other"--for me, at least: bringing the reader a fantasy she can enjoy. My "other" writing skews to the female fantasy side of fiction-- male characters as women fantasize about them and otherworldly creatures as perceived by me with no one to suggest my portrayals are inaccurate. I have also written lesbian fiction from the perspective of a bisexual woman with some experience, though I sometimes feel distanced from the experiences of those characters.

I have occasionally tackled a character of a different race, tapping into my own experiences as a minority in various communities. Yet I'm always wary of stereotyping, of being a voice for someone whose life is so far removed from my own. I have not yet written a transgendered character because I don't feel I could do the experience and emotions justice. I believe I have written only one story from a gay male perspective and while I was honored it was published in Ultimate Gay Erotica (from the defunct Alyson Publishing), the story was very much tongue-in-cheek with a fantasy theme and a level of humor to suggest erotic satire. In other words, it wasn't written to be taken seriously as the gay male experience.

I am an advocate for writers writing anything they choose, from any perspective they choose. If an author is comfortable writing the other--and can do it with a level of authenticity--I wish them all the best. But as a woman who has encountered her share of inaccurate and insulting stereotypes written by men who didn't have a clue about the female experience (or even the female anatomy, in some cases), the key word there is authenticity. Like every other aspect of writing, research is paramount when you are not completely familiar with the subject at hand. Never is that more true than when it comes to writing about people who are different than us. I may write fantasies for women with male characters who are too good to be true, but if my audience were men I think I'd have a couple of those men authenticate my work before I sent it out into the world. It's embarrassing to have someone say that you didn't get their experience right-- but it's a hell of a compliment when they say that you did.

Keeping It Real – how to avoid writer's burn out

Hi, I'm the new guy trying to fill Ashley Lister's shoes each Thursday on "Oh Get A Grip".

Under the name Mike Kimera, I write fiction about sex and lust and the things they do to us. Under my real name, I make my living as a management consultant.

So, does that make Mike Kimera real or fake?

I chose the name "Kimera" thinking that it would be obvious that it was not a real name (Kimera = Chimera – how smart am I?). I wanted to be honest about being fake. I didn't realise that in the US, Kimera is a real name so the only one who knew I was fake was me.

That happens to me a lot.

I've been writing as Mike Kimera for ten years or so now. Over that time he has become real to me. There are things he would write and things he would not. He is a construct, a cyber-life, but he is, in his way, as real as the person who turns up at clients and helps them build strategies.

What does any of this have to do with burn out?

I created Mike Kimera as a way of avoiding burn out.

I have the kind of job where talented people think that they can solve any problem if they work hard enough and long enough. It's the kind of job where people push themselves until they break. Then, one day, they can't cope: they are overwhelmed, hollow, hopeless, useless to themselves and others.

We all know this. We've all seen it. We just know it won't happen to us because... well it just won't.

I realised that, to avoid burn out, I needed to have something else in my life. Something that allowed me to exist beyond work. Something that set me free.

At first, that was all there was to it. But freedom, unfettered, boundless, ruleless, targetless freedom is not something I have a talent for.

I'm obsessed with patterns and structures and relationships. I couldn't just be Mike Kimera, I had to have a rationale for being Mike Kimera.

I arrived at the understanding that I didn't want to be free; I wanted to be real.

I wanted a space where I could say all those things that the other me would self-censor out of existence.

I discovered that what interested me about sex and lust is that they can tell us who we are. The insights we have about what we want, what we lust after, what we yearn for, and the things we are willing to do, and the things we refuse to do, to get them define something real at the heart of our identity.

I discovered that what I found compelling about writing is how all consuming it is. There is just you, your imagination and the blank screen... until you write the first sentence. Then there is you and the story and the fight to get the story on the page. When I'm writing, there is nothing else. It is what Csikszentmihalyi meant by a "flow" experience: intrinsically motivating, a source of happiness.

And then, one day, you lose it.

Writer's Burn Out.

I don't mean being too tired to write or having no ability to write. I'm talking about losing the will to write because writing no longer makes you happy.

When this happens to me I realise that I've started to treat writing the way I treat my job: something that I'm good at and do as well as I can but which doesn't really mean anything to me.

I've stopped being real.

The real part is the source of the joy. No real, no joy. Simple.

So how do you get the real back?I'm going to offer two things.

The first is from the management consultant me. Don't panic, I'm from the keep-them-entertained-and-they'll-pay-more school of consultancy.

The second is a short piece of text that I wrote when I was feeling burnt out and needed solace.

So here's the first part.

In management consultant land, one of the currently fashionable ideas is "authenticity" (a hard sell in the business world -"Authenticity? Yeah, I can see that's important. If we can fake that, everything else will be easier). To make money from an idea like that, you need a quadrant diagram. I've adapted the one that Pine and Gilmore came up with back in 2007.

Here's the deal.

As a writer you have two opportunities to be real. The first is to be true to yourself: what you believe in, what you want the writing to achieve, what turns you on, what means something to you. The second is to be true to the expectations you set with your readers about the kind of story this is, about the kind of writer you are, about the kind of reader you expect them to be.

The diagram shows these two opportunities to be real as a quadrant.

Fake Fake: the bottom left-hand corner is always the worst place to be on a quadrant diagram. Here what you're writing is something your readers won't believe and something that you don't believe in.
My advice: stop writing, you're wasting everyone's time

Real Fake:This is where the reader accepts the reality of what you're writing. You get fan mail saying how great it is. BUT you think it's phoney, pulp fiction churned out to a formula.
My advice, if you need to pay the bills and there's a good market, go for it but don't expect joy; that's why pay is called compensation.

Fake Real: you've written your heart out. You've described the essence of the human condition, your own prose leaves you in tears but no one else gets it. To them is seems contrived, over-written, unrealistic, inaccessible. Perhaps "Finnegan's Wake" is in this quadrant or perhaps Joyce was just taking the piss.
My advice: if it gives you joy, if it helps you to see the world more clearly, write it anyway BUT challenge yourself. Blake said "Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed." Maybe you have to work on how you tell your truth.

Real Real: the top right-hand corner is the source of maximum joy: you are writing what you feel in your heart, what you know in your bones. You are pushing yourself to do the difficult thing and write naked in front of your audience, AND they're right there with you. Your story stays on their skin like the sweat of a lover after sex, it touches something inside them that goes beyond words, they use your words to express their truth.
My advice: If this isn't what you're trying for when you sit at the keyboard, you're really missing out on something. When this works, even a little, there is no greater high.

O.K. , seminar over. Here's the piece of text that I promised. Enjoy. I hope to see you next week.

"Fireflies"

(c) Mike Kimera 2010

When the wounds of the day
And the sleep-debt of the week
Tap in to my bone-deep well of sadness,
Fierce anger ignites
Bringing momentary warmth and light
At the cost of a mouthful of ashes

Afterwards, in the cooling dark
Rocking slowly back and forth
I wrap myself in a thin blanket of regret,
Mourning the delight life once brought me

Finally, in the still quiet of my exhausted mind,
Words, unbidden but welcome, flicker into being
Little fireflies of hope dancing in the dark
Dispelling gloom with evocations of past happiness
And the promise that joy will rise with the sun