(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: D. Gilson
Place is context in part, but it is not context in summation.
...moreBecome a Rumpus Member
Join NOW!Place is context in part, but it is not context in summation.
...moreA writer must push her pleasure into risk, expose herself publicly to strangers with no knowledge of how she might be received, and become something that must be seen.
...moreIf there is going to be pain, let it be by choice.
...moreThe pressure to prove ourselves can have a distorting effect, causing us to doubt our instincts in favor of following others we perceive to be experts or “genuine.”
...moreIt is about the essential parts of story. The bones. The steel rods and rings. The skin that goes white with tension. Tolerating that kind of discomfort takes practice, yes, but it is exhilarating.
...moreThe way I think about my writing is similar to the way I think about my kink—both have to do with history and the ethics around appropriation.
...moreTrauma steals meaning and expression. BDSM and writing create them.
...moreI am an emerging writer and fairly young kinkster. The letters on my keyboard are just starting to fade; the leather of my cuffs is just starting to crack.
...moreI discovered leather nearly fifteen years ago, at eighteen, right around the time I started writing.
...moreWriting is not just about expressing myself creatively, or even about having my voice heard: it is about releasing some part of myself.
...moreWhat do we as writers tell each other about the intersections of trauma and desire? How do we encourage (or discourage) each other to reveal the power and tensions in those margins?
...moreI wanted to uncover the nest of wires comprising my gender identity and describe its complicated mass.
...moreIs it really that human capacity is limited? Or are we limited by what it is we believe we are able, and allow ourselves—are willing—to see?
...moreThe more secrets I wrote about, the fewer I wanted to keep. And the more secrets I made public through my writing, the more I gained.
...moreBDSM, like writing, can be so self-serious. By letting go of my formal commitment to both, I found ways to release my expectations, and as a result, let them back into my life in healthier and more fulfilling ways.
...morePoems and rope that make me plumb my depths and stretch my limits of my poetic language: that’s the worthwhile project.
...moreThere’s a connection between the longings of the characters I develop in my fiction and my urge to dominate.
...moreI would go so far as to say that the entire reason I write is to detect all the irony that language allows and twist it around the truth like razor wire and ivy. That’s how I like my truth: twisted.
...moreIf I am a sub poet, is poetry as a genre my dom? Is the particular poem I’m working on my dom?
...moreIn this ongoing series, writers in all genres explore the intersection between our literary lives and practices and our BDSM and fetishistic lives and practices.
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