Letting Go of the Girl

by Annabeth Leong

To find out if my writing has changed over the years, I went to my first published erotic story, which I wrote in December 2008. (Not as far back as Giselle's, and not as charming as the tale of the lovely Sophie, I'm afraid.) The story was called "Make It Last," and it appeared in the now defunct Oysters and Chocolate.

“Come on,” Lisa laughed. “You must have done something at some point with someone.” I wanted to kiss the corners of her mouth, at the spots where her lips went from thin to full.

Letting myself lie back, I took a deep breath and resolved to finish what I’d started. “I had this lover,” I began. Lisa made an encouraging sound in her throat. “Every time I got her close to coming, she would push my head away. The muscles in her legs would tighten up, and her clit would be this little rock under my tongue, and I would know she was about to do it. I’d wrap my arms around her waist and hold on hard, thinking maybe this time I’d get in that one extra lick, and she would be screaming and pushing at the top of my head with both her hands.”

I paused, trying to gauge how Lisa was reacting. Her breathing sounded a little faster than normal. My own breathing had certainly sped up. I struggled up onto my elbow and looked down at her. For once, I let myself drink in every lovely curve. I openly admired her long neck and the jawline that traced from a soft, round ear down to a dainty pointed chin, the red-brown lips above that, the wide nose that quivered delicately with each breath. I looked in her eyes again.

“What I wanted to do,” I said, “was tie her to the bed so she couldn’t push me away, and then see how long I could go. I wanted to lick her until the bed under us both was soaked and my tongue got cramped from exhaustion. But I never got to do that.”

I watched Lisa’s chest rapidly rising and falling. Her shirt rode up, exposing her belly button and the very beginning of the fuzz leading down between her thighs. She trembled, and her eyes followed my eyes to the top button of her jeans.

“You never told me you liked girls,” she said in a strained voice.

Another deep breath for me. It felt strange that all the lights in my room were on so late at night. It felt strange to look at her without disguising my lust. I bent over her and pressed my lips to the strip of bare skin between her jeans and her shirt. She jumped. I did it again. “It would have been awkward,” I murmured.

I wrote those words huddled on the loveseat in the living room of the apartment I shared with my first husband (now my ex). Lisa was entirely made up, but the longing in the writing about her is still palpable to me. And the story—"I had this lover"—and the wish that comes with it, is entirely true. (Alert readers will remember the girl I kissed while on top of a rundown train car.)

Lisabet has talked about how she poured all her desires into her first novel, and I've said that I played my cards closer to the chest. But when I read this story in its entirety (I'd give you a link, but it's no longer available online), I see the themes that have shredded me for years now. I may have danced away from this, but it was at the heart of things always. The girl I couldn't forget, the hopeless longing, the fear of revealing desire, and the fear of keeping it hidden.

There is a sort of fantasizing that I've always been able to do to get myself off, but it is cruel, faceless, and nameless. A few years ago, I started wondering: If I could see a face, whose would it be? It turned out to be hers, but when I pictured her and really let myself remember, I couldn't get myself off anymore because I would start to cry.

This is from Untouched, which I wrote from 2013-2014:

Slowly, Marie sat back down on the chair. "Tell me how you wish it had been. Tell me what you need me to do."

Celia sucked a breath in through her teeth and closed her eyes, trying to envision the alternate reality in which things could have worked out between them.

"We would have explored things together. We wouldn't have made such a big deal about prom, and we wouldn't have put so much expectation on that one night. Maybe we would have met at the hotel first so we could spend some time alone together before the dance. We would have ordered room service and I would have watched you eat. I could never stop watching you, Marie. All this time it's been the other way around, but I can still remember how fascinated I was by the way you moved, by every little glimpse I got of your skin. When your cardigan would slip off your shoulder in class, I would stare at the sliver of your bra strap that was peeking out and just drink in the sight of your skin beside it. In the hotel room the night of prom, eating with you, it would have been too much for me. I would have been so turned on by your lips opening and closing, sucking at your fingertips, that I wouldn't have been able to chew my own food—let alone swallow."

Marie laughed, delight on her face. "I'd forgotten that you used to want me, too. It's been so long."

That's still me writing about that girl. I dedicated the book to her, too, with the line, "I should have taken you to prom." And then I wrote another book last fall, under a different name, that is even more about her. So maybe my writing hasn't changed at all. I've done a lot of things, but I've also spent upwards of six years working out my feelings about a girl from my past, one tiny bit at a time. It's embarrassing to admit that, especially with my stated preference for making up characters. I never meant, for example, for Marie to become her, but she did.

Perhaps it's too soon to say, but I think I've finally put it to bed. Something in that last book I wrote felt final. I can talk about her now or think about her without crying. Her face is no longer waiting to ambush me in every secret corner of my mind. I see other faces in my fantasies. They are the same constellation of fantasies, but they feel wider and more possible. I wonder if more hope will come into my writing—I would like that.

I thought about that reading the last paragraph of that story from long ago. I wrote:

If this had happened ten years ago, I might have stopped and held her then. I might have placed my faith in the sex that we would have tomorrow. The years had taught me better. I wound my arms around her thighs and buried my face between her legs, sighing as I tasted her and breathed her in. I pushed my tongue into her again. I had to get enough to make it last.

That's the voice of a cynic, someone who knows there's no going back, there's no tomorrow, there is no such thing as later. And yet recently I've been learning to trust that I'm worth coming back to. I don't have to snatch every scrap of pleasure in every moment because I can see a person again. I can have another chance. I can't yet declare that my writing has changed because of this realization, but I want it to.

(In an unrelated note, I'm doing an online chat tonight in support of my new book Liquid Longing: An Erotic Anthology of the Sacred and Profane. I'll be available from 7-9 p.m. EST at this link: http://www.chatzy.com/FFP-Chat I would love to see any of you there!)

NaNoWriMo? Um, I think not ...

I would LOVE to be able to crank out a novel in a month. Heck, these days, I would be glad to crank out a novella in a month. A short story even would be nice.

Given that my tank of creativity has been sitting on empty since March, even a flash fiction piece would be just dandy right now.

I love the concept of being able to push yourself to ge a novel done, just get it done, in a month. I love the idea of other writers providing support and guidance.

The most I have ever written in a month was 12K and I was about whipped out by the end of it. Then again, I am happy writing short stories, so that was three seperate worlds I had tapped in to. Worldbuilding, character development, dialog, and all ... three times over. I felt emotionally drained, but man, what a feeling.

So I can certainly see the draw of just opening the flood gates of creativity and seeing what comes rushing out.

I'd love to see a reciprical concept for short story writers. Maybe a NaShWriWk. : ) Maybe that would give my muse a kick in the ass that she needs.

Now my husband, he could easily do a NaNoWriMo. In fact, that's just the way he writes, in great big floods. I've gone to classes and come home hours later to find him sitting in his chair watching TV like the great brain dead, with a goofy smile on his face. His welcome to me is "I wrote 10,000 words". The next day, more of the same. A few days later, it happens again.

Maybe a week later, again. He is one lucky son of a bitch like that. But I love him.

And really, I couldn't handle writing like that. I like my brain to be functioning in the evenings.

So I will stick with my current mode of writing as the mood strikes me, but I sure wish my muse wasn't such a fickle bitch. I swear, she is musing around ... cause I haven't gotten any since March!

The Buzz

By Lisabet Sarai

"Hesiod and the Muse", by Gustave Moreau (1891)

Note: I wrote this for another blog, early this year. However, it expresses my thoughts on the creative process so perfectly that I hope you'll forgive my recycling it.

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You've just finished a story, and you know it's good.

You're on top of the world. The muses have been cooperative. You're in the groove.

There's nothing like it, except perhaps waking up after having spent the night having mind-blowing, life-altering sex. You're smiling to yourself, every time you remember. Perhaps various body parts ache or sting or tingle, reminding you just how fabulous it felt while it was happening. Perhaps you blush a bit, recalling the outrageous scenes that you spun out of your imagination. Who could have imagined that you'd be so brave and so bold?

All day long, you walk around like you have a secret. People may look at you oddly, but you don't care. You're still basking in the glow, feeling the energy sizzling through your body. You grin back at strangers, a bit goofy, drunk on the after-effects of inspiration. I just finished writing a dynamite story, a story that would curl your toes, if you only could read it, if you only knew how good it was...

Times like this make it all worthwhile. Because all too often, writing is just plain hard work. I want the story to flow effortlessly and inevitably toward a conclusion that will wring gasps or tears from my readers. In reality, though, I hack away at the paragraphs, writing and rewriting, seeking the elusive image, struggling to keep track of the details. Were the heroine's eyes blue or green in Chapter One? How did the hero get from the window to the bed without anyone noticing? Where was the gun when they were kissing?

Sometimes the words feel like huge, unwieldy boulders that I haul around, arranging and rearranging, trying to build something beautiful and true. Sometimes making my way through the twists and turns of the plot recalls the Prince in Sleeping Beauty, slashing through the forest of poisonous thorns in order to claim his beloved.

Then there are the times when I'm just plain sick of reading what I write. Don't tell me I've slipped and used that same tired old phrase yet again! Didn't my protagonist have an orgasm like a hurricane in the last scene? Why do my characters talk like they're in some "English for tourists" guide? When did that paragraph degenerate from "lyrical" to "overwritten"? Why would anyone want to read this stale, unoriginal crap, anyway?

Actually, I think that the key to being successful as a writer may lie in the ability to ignore all that snarky self-criticism and just keep on writing, building the word count, reminding yourself that you'll have a chance to improve it all later.

Still, if writing were always an effort, a job, probably I wouldn't continue. It's the delicious and relatively rare experience of inspiration that's the payoff. The exhilaration of having the words flow from my mind to the page without conscious planning. The heady sense of control as I craft sentence after sentence, knowing that each one says exactly what I intend. The sudden "Aha!" as I see how to foreshadow an ominous climax or tie an image back to a previous one, how to use symbolism or metaphor, not as an empty structural conceit but as an organic element in a harmonious whole.

I'm drunk on my power over words. I'm high on creation. Afterward, I'm still shaking with excitement, but humbled and grateful, too, understanding that I've been given a precious gift.

I call it "the buzz", but really, it has much in common with a rare, perfect night of love, one of those nights when the physical and the spiritual are aligned and you have no alternative but to believe in magic.

My Muse

My muse is a man. He never tells me what I need to know until after the fact. And he’s annoying. And he likes to vacation in Europe while I’m in the middle of writing a book. He’s fond of whispering sweet nothings in my ear while I’m drifting off to sleep or giving me the key turning point in my story while I’m in the shower. I’d fire him, but somehow, he gets the job done.

He likes water. He talks while I swim or I’m in the whirlpool. He speaks in the rain and have I mentioned the shower? If I’m really, really stuck on a story, you might find me heading for a long, hot shower in the middle of the afternoon.

He adores music. I listen and he send movies through my head. We like to drive and plot. I’ve learned to take notes with one hand while I guide the car through traffic with the other. I’m good at writing without looking at the paper.

Music. I write to it. The muse has picked a soundtrack for every book and it’s part of my manuscript prep work. There are some songs that are basic to every book I write. I have various versions of Hallelujah that make it onto every soundtrack (think Rufus Wainwright’s version in Shrek). This Year’s Love by David Gray is essential. Lullaby by the Dixie Chicks. In My Heaven the Bo Bice version. Breath and Diary of Jane by Breaking Benjamin. Music invokes mood. I carefully choose each song to match the emotion of what I’m writing. The muse likes that. It’s his crutch.

But sometimes I take that crutch away. When the muse refuses to speak, I refuse to let him have music or sound. You might be amazed by how quickly answers come after five minutes driving in a totally silent car.

I’m not insane. I don’t really think there is some guy who follows me around whispering into my ear—wouldn’t that be nice? And annoying. But there are ways to trick the brain. I know my brain’s triggers. As a writer, I think that’s one of the most important things to learn. What and where are the circumstances that allow your creativity to flow? Is there certain music? Are there certain pictures to look at? A particular scent? A particular place? A particular format (paper versus computer)? Do you need to be alone or can you write with people around?

I’ve long said that I don’t believe in writer’s block. I believe in writer’s procrastination. I believe in writer’s distraction. I believe as a writer, you have to learn how to get around that. We must outwit the muse and tell him we’re in charge…

Take away his music until he speaks.