Well, howdy everybody! I can’t believe it, but this is only my second blog post for the new year! Not necessarily what I had planned for myself, but I’ve had some other things that have needed wordsmithing outside of this blog, so there it is. There’s my pitiful excuse for not being more regular.
But let me be a little more honest with you. I also haven’t posted in a while, because for a good month I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about next. Nothing was coming to me exactly, but something did finally come to mind, and I felt like getting back on the figurative horse. After all, this year is considered the year of the Horse by the Chinese calendar, so we’re all good there.
First of all, I am very aware that my title for today’s blog “Write Like A Hermaphrodite” may ruffle some of your feathers. May make some of you uncomfortable, or comfortably irate.
Either way, I want to assure you that I mean no disrespect to individuals who face the challenges of living in a body with both male and female reproductive organs. They have my deepest respects, and those beautiful intersex people are perfect to help me illustrate my creative point for this week. And that is: in order to be a balanced, stable potent (prolific) writer – one who can seed Ideas, incubate them, and then give birth to them – you need to have both male and female sexual energies, and in near-perfect balance.
I know I’ve said it before in other Attunements, but I’m going to say it again anyway. Writing is a sexual activity. Not just writing, but indeed any creative act is also a sexual act. And this is because the creative act does the same thing as the intimate physical action – it disperses creative force, and from that life – or at least the potential for life is activated.
In order for a pregnancy to “take” the masculine sexual energy must persist in planting some of the ingredients, while the feminine sexual energy must persist in receiving/making womb space for the life that will emerge, while also adding material into the makeup of that life. That being.
Writers become pregnant with ideas, whether or not they are male or female writers. But in order to effectively see an idea to term – to completion – the writer must understand, and embody and then create a way of behaving with their Muses so that they may take physical form. The inability to do this in one way or another, is a sure sign that the writer has “writer’s block” but I don’t believe writer’s block exists. But the inability to create or the unwillingness to create, signals the same issue. An issue of “infertility” – one that has its roots in masculine and feminine imbalances.
I’ve seen it happen both ways, and interestingly members of the opposite sex (or the opposite energy) will have issues with the energy that they do not often embody. I have seen some of my male clients stall out on their ideas. And not because they aren’t any good, but because the idea has come to them in an explosion of inspiration, and they put the first few moments on the page, but lack the concept of nurturing. They proceed to rush the idea – rush the book – thinking that after the first month of writing, as long as they have a somewhat completed book, the process is over.
But just as in sexual intercourse, the speed at which the idea (the sperm) enters the womb (creative space) does not mean that the job is done. It means that the real work has just begun. And since the writer does not have two separate bodies, if he or she does not understand that it will take time, patience, slow, methodical and wizened words to flesh the book (baby) out, the idea will stop at its inception. It’s conception, it’s first moments, never able to escape the first dribblings of ink.
And before you start thinking that I’m going to say that this is a chiefly “male” problem – meaning only men have this issue, absolutely not. This can happen to men or women. I’ve seen it. In women, it usually happens to those who have more of a masculine – a more intense, results-oriented approach. And by no means am I trying to make broad statements. I’m simply trying to describe something about the different sexual energies we bring to any creative act, whether we are creating a child, or a literary work. The principles are the same.
The opposite is true. I have encountered clients who have too much feminine energy. Too much nurturing, and to the point of getting no movement. That the book is getting worked on, but just barely. The work becomes stagnant in its creative space, as there is perhaps too much time and too much thinking and too much babying going on with the work. In these cases, the writers (men and women) have an idea, but have grown unwilling to let it spark – let it be pushy, unpredictable and perhaps even a little territorial. They hold back the boldness, the raw energy and power in their ideas, and therefore do not allow it to thrust forward in new and different ways.
In this case the masculine energy has been severely diminished. And as such we see these writers dragging their feet – resisting either a boldness in their writing, or in keeping their writing commitments. Where the writer with too much masculine energy may be unwilling to slow down and proceed with gentleness, the other shies away from holding their pen erect. From standing tall with their ideas, and asking the world to take notice of them.
So don’t just write with female energy or masculine energy. Write with both. Write like a hermaphrodite – a creative being who is capable of sparking and nurturing a creation until it is born. For they are far from being infertile or incapable. In reality, they represent unbridled potential, and a certain level of creative virility.
One that if you ever hope to get it up, and get your book on the shelf, you’d better start learning and allowing yourself to harness.
The Write Alignment: Your Daily Creative Attunment 