On Being a Writer With Skin in the Game

Untitled Blue / via Flickr
Untitled Blue / via Flickr

Today’s guest post is by author L.L. Barkat (@llbarkat).


“Why don’t you like to talk about your writing?” I asked. “I mean, you’re not writing erotica or something, are you?”

I was taking a business contact out for tea. I was kidding.

But, moments later I discovered I was right. This is exactly why my contact was shy to discuss her writing. Unbeknownst to me, I was taking a fairly well-known erotica writer to tea, albeit under her real name.

Well.

There’s a part of me that is not completely comfortable talking about my writing either, and for similar reasons: the best of it is highly personal, even as it is universal. There is, as they say, skin in the game, and it feels a little exhibitionistic to discuss it. I have a poem in my new collection, Love, Etc., that deals with this question of the how far the writer must go, and the poem disturbs me. Here is an excerpt.

The canes were stripped,
and maybe you will see
a woman in them, or your
very soul, and you will wish
you were a stripper,
no longer holding out
on the world…

Of course, I did not need to put the poem in the collection. Who would have been the wiser if I left it out? But I put it in, because part of what I am struggling to express in the collection is the uneasy pact the writer (and later, the writer-as-marketer) makes with the world: yes, come see I’ve got skin in the game.

I say “uneasy” because there is such a delicate balance. Push too far, and you are the next “raw, authentic” writer who is really just manipulating the crowd with too much information. (Better to save that for Snapchat and let the record disappear.) Don’t push far enough, and you are holding out on the world, and the reader knows instinctively there’s nothing worth staying for.

Does it matter?

I think it does, and not just from an artistic standpoint.

The sheer volume of materials available to today’s readers means that they will need to begin to make more and more choices. Time constraints, fatigue, and economics will compel them to do so.

Best, then, to think long term as a writer.

My erotica-writing contact exhausted herself pretty quickly. It was not an easy life, not terribly sustaining (although she says she had fun for a while). Compare this to a writer like Rebecca Solnit, whose book The Faraway Nearby we read just together as a community, at the site I manage. The Faraway Nearby is Solnit’s thirteenth book, and I am not sure she had fun at all, writing it, but it is a beauty that will have staying power.

As many writers do, I am now speaking to myself as much as I am to you. I am encouraging us to remember that writing is something to take the long view over, developing ourselves into the kind of writers that readers can trust for openness that isn’t just sensationalism—and for quality that will be worth their continued time, attention, and dollars.

What’s your plan for doing so?

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Shirley Hershey Showalter

Beautiful essay. Chiseled. Defined. Like you’ve taken your skin to the gym. 🙂

Terri Rochenski

Interesting post! I’ve been thinking on this very thing. An historical romance writer, I feel pressured to add TMI in the love scenes. Yes, I enjoy a good erotic tale on occasion, but I won’t write it. My stories are sweet – with just enough heat to satisfy the ‘Less is more’ readers. There’s definitely a fine line, one we need to tread & choose with careful thought.

L.L. Barkat

Terri, where is the pressure coming from (is it your own internal pressure? Or some kind of editorial pressure?)

That makes me smile that you enjoy an erotic tale, but you won’t write it.

One of the poems in Love, Etc. asks…

Is there such a thing as
disposable sexy pie?
Does it come in aluminum, flimsy?

It’s the kind of question that serves the writer as well as anybody. Maybe it serves readers too. “Pie” is good for the soul at some level. How we make it, serve it, eat it, well… there’s something to consider.

Terri Rochenski

I’d say the pressure comes from ‘what sells’. Even YA novels these days push the boundaries of what some consider proper or necessary for teenage innocence. There’s no editorial, but perhaps a bit of the internal voice saying no one reads sweet romance any more.
Totally loving your poems. 🙂

L.L. Barkat

For me, especially as a poet, there is the artistic question to consider. I want my work to last. I have this fantasy of being like Rumi, still selling my love poems 500 years after I’m gone. 😉

Then there is the question of creating what makes the soul last. That’s the kind of writer I also want to be.

If you write sweet romance worth reading, I’m guessing someone will read it. I think we want more innocence than we know we do. We want to love in ways that build us inside, even as they maybe tickle us too.

I hope you keep setting your own standard, Terri. 🙂

Terri Rochenski

I, too, want to be such a writer.

Thank you so much for your words of edification and encouragement!

darrelynsaloom

Enjoyed this post, Laura. I am working on a collection of memoir essays from childhood, and my plan is to be honest and to always come from a place of love when I write about adults who (in retrospect) were just battling their own demons. What is coming out on the page is humorous, which is how I dealt with the tough parts of childhood. Through writing, I’m back in touch with myself as a child. So erotica is not a conundrum. But that is my plan for this project.

L.L. Barkat

oh, i want to read your humor, Darrelyn! 🙂 I’m sure it’s the kind that simply can’t be untangled from the text.

darrelynsaloom

🙂

SimplyDarlene

In your poem, my first thought was of a candy cane.. and a licker, rather than a stripper. But since we read poems slanted through our vantage points, stripping the wrapper off a piece of candy leaves it vulnerable for me.

Ah. You don’t just tell us, you engage us with those pointed, simple questions.

I need to think some before I answer.

L.L. Barkat

Sorry… 🙂 I’m guessing if the poem hadn’t been excerpted, you might have seen what I saw… wineberry canes, ruby against the landscape. They are truly beautiful, but there is something distressingly revealing about them too.

I think, on the spectrum, I prefer a subtle writer who “bares the soul” without a big show. That’s why the poem image is an uneasy one for me. I’m not suggesting a writer be crass or unnecessarily revealing, but I also know that a writer has got to make a pact of intimacy with a reader. Because readers are often strangers to us, it can put us in the strange space of almost being “on stage” in what feels too intimate but is necessary.

Poems. Ah. My own disturb me sometimes with the questions they raise. Like one of the other poems says, “Poems say too much, or they know too little.” 😉

Elizabeth

This is an important discussion and these are important questions. Hmmm, I am thinking this. I discussed with a writer friend over lunch some of these same questions during which I confessed — I do not like to be herded and I do not herd well. I like to arrive at conclusions based on my own timing, life experiences and head and heart. That said I want the writer to show and tell and entice with lots of nuance. I crave beauty and story and freshness from writers and poets. Do not connect the dots for me, allow me enough intrigue to connect the dots on my own. You do this beautifully, L.L. One of the deepest parts of this “conundrum” is how to be authentic and build trust and intimacy through words without a sensationalist approach and TMI. You know I loved Love Etc. Perhaps because it is a perfect blend of these ingredients which I find critical to exquisite writing. Thank you for being generous of yourself in your work.

L.L. Barkat

“based on my own timing, life experiences and head and heart.”

Really nice, Elizabeth. That must be part of it for me too. And why I prefer to write in such a way that a reader’s experience will take him places even as I lead along.

It’s as much a matter of the kind of writer I want to be as it is the gift I hope to give to the reader (the gift of himself/herself tilted in a such a way that the self is perceived afresh).

I had fun literally playing with space in this collection, in such a way that when a reader would visually “connect the dots,” it would lend an “aha” moment, deliciously so. The same space would mean nothing to the inexperienced. What fun, really. Like a secret language.

Well, what do you think? How do you build trust and intimacy without being sensationalistic? (I have some ideas based on Klinkenborg’s work, but I’d love to hear what you’re thinking.)

Thank *you* for being a reader. 🙂

Elizabeth

It is art, not science. If we truly knew, we’d know. But there is a perfect blend in art that feels ready for sharing which is at its “release date.” Something akin to a ripened avocado. It is just ready. Based on where I am and what I have to invest deeply in my craft, today. This is the offering. Like a “secret language” I think we know if we are bold, brave and honest with ourselves. This is it. This is its time.

This is my best offering of this. Release. Breathe peace.

Not everyone will love it or like it or deeply understand it. But as the writer, artist it was our brave, our real, our story, and our interpretation of what we had lived and experienced.

Trust is never build immediately, nor should it be. But I have read storytellers whom I DID trust from early into their work, because my heart said they are to be trusted 🙂 Intimacy building without being sensationalistic??? I need to revisit or visit Klinkenborg’s.

L.L. Barkat

Bravery, yes. That’s part of it. We would trust ourself sooner to a brave person, perhaps.

K. discusses the need for the writer to come with strength of technique. There is something about a writer who can actually *handle* words with facility… that breeds trust.

So it’s not as mysterious as some would like it to be, I suppose. Because it means really hard work. Not just practice in the same shallow directions, but work. Like a poet making herself write form poetry instead of continuing to write the same tired free verse and never learn beyond it.

(This is (often) the down side of blogging, to me. Writers practice in the wrong direction again and again, only solidifying their unpracticed techniques and not really growing.)

philipparees

I was facing a similar dilemma last week, but not about erotica, but the ‘decency’ of writing about my mother which, in a way was also about myself and our uneasy complicated relationship which shaped everything, and mostly what I write about. I felt the issues had universal relevance but baulked at writing in the first person so chose the third. An interesting comment said using the third person made it more immediate and evocative. Somewhere in this decision there is a kernel to tease out, about revelation and declaration and the responsibility of the author to serve the claims of those as well as the privacy of people. An interesting balance to think about.

L.L. Barkat

Ah, memoir. In some way, all writing *is* memoir, but the memoirist makes it clearest and has a tricky time.

Most publishers will require you to ask permission if you’re going to write about someone who is still living. We do that, and we recommend that the writer change names and circumstances (and indicate that it’s been done), if permission can’t be obtained. So it’s more than just a writing question (borders on legal).

What kind of writing are mostly doing? Is it memoir, or fiction?

philipparees

I am doing a series of ‘blog’ posts which are threaded on a family quilt, ( each panel of which portrays a character from my family) but it is basically memoir. All the characters featured so far are dead! I felt the exploration of what shapes a writer could start with moi , since those are what I know best! Some yet to come are living so your advice is prescient!.

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[…] Untitled Blue / via Flickr Today’s guest post is by author L.L. Barkat (@L.L. Barkat). “Why don’t you like to talk about your writing?” I asked. “I mean, you’re not writing erotica or something, are you?  […]

Angie Dixon

Thanks, Jane. I’m very sensitive and protective of various aspects of my writing, as well. Some of it is just silly–like being embarrassed about how fast I write (well). I kind of feel like a freak in that instance. But other ways I’m closed about expressing myself include more personal things that I simply refuse to write about, and always have so refused. I have a regular argument with my best friend about whether I’m ever going to write about those things. My answer is always no, but you’ve made me think. Maybe there is something there that I not only can but should share.

SimplyDarlene

Okay, L.L., I took your question literal. Here’s my response.

My plan for being a writer worthy of the time, attention,
and dollars of readers who trust me for stories told slant through the pen of
Darlene is thus:

1. Learn and apply the bits ‘n pieces of my craft, be it non-fiction, fiction, interview, memoir, and/or poetry.

2. When life hardens and leans heavy against my pencil, I shall choose an option: one, write anyway – from the roots of the craft. Character. Plot. Passion. Emotion. Direction. Action. Outline. Drafts.

Two, write any way – both, when I am able, and especially when I’m not. Scrawl words over top tear-soaked napkins. Brush crumbs off paper plates and write in circles.

3. Trust an editor’s knowledge knife to cut, carve, and whittle down to the worthy core.

L.L. Barkat

All good! 🙂 I especially love “learn,” because too many writers don’t attend to that one. They just keep writing in the same directions and don’t really raise their skills to the next level. Editors can be helpful in this regard, but nothing beats setting out with a teacher at your side (a good one) and really, really finding new ways to express. (Writing cross-genre is helpful. And, yes, poetry is especially good, because it compels you to express as clearly and strongly as possible in a small space.)

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