The italic sections are actually next to the paragraph proceeding them, but I could not figure out how to use columns here.

Writer's Block

I find striving to be politically correct when writing nearly impossible and attempting authenticity even more daunting. Ultimately I desire my writing to be genuine, which is a fallacy when attempting to be politically correct. After all, there is nothing inherently neutral about setting a pen to the page.

I read a lot of books today
And now I have a lot to say
Good books, big books
Brimming with ideas, books:
A memoir, a novel, some poems, a play
Good books, bad books
Lots of books, books

I read them all day
But now it’s almost light again
Wicked, very tired dark-

All right, yes.
You may turn off the light.

I have a character that forms an erotic relationship with an older fellow female classmate in high school. Opal, the protagonist’s friend, is a more than loosely based caricature of a girl I knew and loved well. But issues with being politically correct abound because neither the character nor I identify as lesbian.

I take in a deep breath,
Bare arms spread out on the honey wood floor,
Naked legs tangled in yours,
A sheet lost between us.

The ticking clock steals my sleep and
I can’t help but wonder
If we’re losing anything else
In this entanglement.

Furthermore, I know my character, and she was sexually abused. Can I recreate an authentic experience, since I was not abused? Will the gay community object because of the possibility of the implication that homosexuality arises from abuse, even though I myself do not endorse this viewpoint? I can leave out the abuse, but this is not true to her character, and it will no longer be genuine.

Knee socks off; skirt on, but not for long. The particles of mid afternoon dust settle on the furniture as the backs of my legs stick to the couch in the stifling heat of the windowless room. Sometimes I think I will suffocate while I wait. I imagine he would still unbuckle his belt.

For some time, I have wanted to write about the plight of day laborers, but can I champion a cause I personally could not be further from, spare seeing men waiting for work on Northern Boulevard when I have been stopped at a red light? A big issue I have been grappling with is that nearly all of my characters are white. I do not know if I have the right or ability to authentically replicate the experience of someone of another race, but I do know that I don’t want to intentionally exclude anyone. Marxism is important to me, but if this does not reflect in my writing, am I a bad Marxist? Isn’t Marxism inevitable in the writing of a Marxist?

Queens is the feeling of a cold, hard stoop and the way the gritty brick feels so good as it tattoos itself onto the backs of your thighs.

Over-thinking can never lend itself to genuine writing. Perhaps the real question I should be asking is if anyone reads anymore to begin with, and if I am wasting my time predicting backlash which may never come.

Thinkitwishitdreamithopeitmakeitwinitworkitloseitwinit

Feel it?

In my mind, authenticity does not have to be achieved from shared experience. I like to think I understand my characters. So even though I have never had an abortion, I know what Arlie is thinking when she has hers. But will I offend someone who has actually gone through the experience, and can I write Arlie’s story authentically?

Arlie thought of the body/soul mate myth often. She used to equate it the way it was told to her: in the beginning of time, all the bodies were cut in half. Ever since, the bodies searched in want of unity. Sex in this equation becomes the means of reminding the two bodies that they are meant to be one. In the new version, Arlie thought of bodies as whole first and shattered upon the discovery of love of another body. Sex in this equation is executing an impossible desire to connect two separates.
It was no surprise that Arlie thought in terms of bodies. She had been taught to train her body since she was a little girl. There were certain places to relieve one’s body. There were certain sounds to avoid making. There were certain parts to hide. There were other bodies that could grow inside your body.
Arlie thought of her baby as a baby drifting about with other unborn babies. At first, she’d urged herself not to think of him as a baby. Fetus, she’d say to herself. But she had never liked the idea because it sounded like something foreign. In this way, her mind had given birth although her body had rejected it with the assistance of the doctor.
Her baby was a baby floating about with the others in the sea of aborted babies. Arlie made a distinction here, too. Although she thought of the sea of babies as aborted to the exclusion of others (such as those miscarried) she still said “unborn.” In this vision, the babies are anonymous- no faces, no distinction in figure or gestational stage. She cannot tell which one is hers.

Maybe my mistake is thinking of my characters as real entities, but it is almost impossible for me to accept that Opal andArlie have not become real. The creative process was the pregnancy, and the page their birth. I once heard somewhere that J.D. Salinger would tell other people at the dinner table to pass the salt to Holden. While I am not about to secure condiments for them, I do spend a lot of time thinking about how my characters would hold a fork, answer question, or sit during a movie.

He’d started coming to The Museum of Modern Art on his lunch breaks after his divorce because there were no longer cucumber sandwiches waiting to be served to him in an Upper West Side classic four. Sometimes he ate a packed sandwich along the way, but more often he took lunch in the museum café and was thus developing a gut from the pastries and fried chicken.

I am an author. This bizarre process, I imagine, is what writers do. I can draw the portrait of a character I believe in and, out of necessity, will have to be brave enough to journey outside the realm of my own experience and trust that readers will be able to separate me from my characters. If there are readers left out there, I do not want them to waste their time on a character that is acting out of turn because I am afraid of offending someone. After all, if I don’t believe in Opal and Arlie and the rest, who ever will?

Jimmy peeled away Karina’s stiff uniform shirt to reveal a bright Easter egg of a bruise flanking her abdomen. He placed his index and middle finger to the green and crimson flecked splotch and was surprised by the warmth it emanated. He cradled Karina’s head in his hand and could see down the bony ridge of her spine which was purple in several places, with a scratch spanning the small of her back. He wondered, of course, who had done it and how it had happened.