OPINIONS

Reader Feedback on "Writers' Block"

This was such a hilarious piece. Thank you for popping up on Google when I searched for "funny blurbs about writers' block." I am currently working on a piece that I can't figure out if it would make a better screenplay or novel, but there are plenty of sex scenes!
--LL
09/01

Great piece! Right on, and I loved the last line. (I'm a Roth groupie.)
--MS
07/02

Lisa Gabriele, you fucking rule! And that's ocming from someone who likes to fuck and get fucked. ;)
--AB
09/14

brilliant writing...
--mk
12/17

The title of this article is the reason I just joined nerve. I am muchos pleased. I love writing raunche raunch and Lisa you rock babe. Also just peeped the Sopranos - I actually had a dream a couple of nights back that Nick gave it to me. Love your work sister, I'll be following xxx
--
10/13

i am so in love... lisa's writing about sex scenes in books turned me on a lot more than most of the psuedo-erotica that i usually read. i'd write more, but it'll take way too long to finish up with one hand...lisa, lisa...ummmm,...
--krd
10/07

read "The Man from St. Petersburg by Ken Follett"!
--bh
10/03

Hi Lisa, I've followed your work since the "Lisa Diaries", and I haven't had much sex in the last several months.....if you give me your email address, and maybe a few months, I think I might be able to write you one or two fantasies that could possibly move you to think that not all of us are afraid to address sex in our writing. Val. valiqueg@hotmail.com
--Vg
09/30

Young writers care too much perhaps. They have too much riding on their idea of their own beauty myths. How can I write about beauty when I throw all this dirt in here? They might say. There's nothing wrong with preserving your sense of dignity with your sense of depravity alongside it.
--rcd
09/29

I highly recommend Susie Bright's "How to Write a Dirty Story" to writers with erotic blocks. The exercises through which she takes the reader, for example writing short pieces in all of the cliche' styles could help one develop an erotic voice of there own.
--rar
09/22

Hey Lisa, great text. But, if you wanna sex, I mean, sex litterally well written, you should learn Portuguese and read some Brasilian contemporary books. I´m proud to say: we´re fucking good in the art of putting in words what we gourgeously do with the body. I luv your articles. Kisses, Ronaldo Bressane, São Paulo, Brasil, bressane@internetsp.com.br
--RB
09/18

Dude, read Bret Ellis!
--fo
09/18

Hello from the land of romance writers! That dreaded, enormous, extremely successful genre of pop fiction that you totally did not mention in your essay (which, by the way, was excellent and hit the penis on the head.)While I share your pain, sister, I. . .well, I share your pain. I write what could fairly be called romantic pop fiction. A regular novel. Relationships, drama, good ol' soppy emotion, a good dose of sexual tension and actual humping, plus a plot. I am very successful at it, and have been for many years. Like most romance writers (and btw, whatever that term conjures up to you, you're probably wrong about what I write) anyway, like most romance writers, I'm accustomed to being fucked over by major reviewers and ignored by prize committees outside the genre world. I'm used to ass-wipe reviewers quoting from two pages of sex scenes in a 400 page novel. The New York Post once used an excerpt from an unreleased book of mine to prove that my new publisher, the venerable Little, Brown, had hired itself one big whole hump-lovin' hack writer. The "sex scene?" A description of a naked woman standing by a lake. And as for the lit'rary world being pale-ass TERRIFIED of any novel that even remotely espouses melodrama and actual emotion, yes it's true. Reviewers love murder, mayhem, hacking women up in crime fiction, irony, cynicism, guns, etc. but sentimentality of even the highest order immediately reduces one's writing to an unimportant piece of drivel fit only for flowery covers. Unless you're a man writing about sex and emotion, which means your work is automatically more respectable, especially if Keven Costner makes the movie. So to repeat: I share your pain, and understand where you're coming from, and kind of find it funny, in a bleak way, that the literary world, like the world in general, mistakenly celebrates dry humps and pretentious cynicism while turning up its nose at good, gooey, teary, honest fuck.
--DBS
09/18

I recommend reading Andrew Lewis Conn's novel "P". It's a modern, sexy tribue to Joyce's "Ulysses".
--CFQ
09/15

I just read the (excellent) article "Writer's Block," and just wanted to point out that not every intimate scene requires a graphic description of how much throbbing is going on, or how moist an orifice is at ay given time.
--SC
09/15

Fuckin' A! heh. I'm startiong to get into 'two-handed sex writing' (excellent phrase, by the way). I found 'Why the tree loves the axe' By Jim Lewis in a charity shop, whoever owned it first had no sense, there are several really well written sexual scenes, in my opinion at least.
--JayB
09/14

I don't write sex scenes because I'm not good at them. Most sex scenes by other authors don't work for me, either. There is always one awkward word that gives me a jolt and ruins the whole thing, or an off-putting reference to body odors, or something that takes me out of the moment. If I want to read erotica, there's plenty of that available, and some of it is pretty good. But graphic sex scenes seem out of place, forced, in literary fiction. The article makes some really good points, though. If someone can do it right, I'm all for it, but I haven't yet found the writer who can weave a good sex scene into a novel. I think all of those books I read when I was 16 (Erica Jong, Philip Roth) ruined literary sex for me.
--J.
09/14

Excellent article. As a 30-year-old female writer working on a literary novel with a LOT of sex in it, should I feel encouraged (no one else has the nerve to do what I'm doing) or discouraged (I'm not disaffected enough to get the kind of press Lucinda Rosenfeld and Meghan Daum get)? I don't know, but in maybe the past 5 years I've felt that urban hipsterism and sex have become mutually exclusive. Pretty lame considering that the whole purpose of being an urban hipster is to be the sexiest and get laid the most--isn't it? At some point, the urban hipsters started valuing career and image over fucking, and then it was not too long before they refused to lay anyone who had wall-to-wall carpet in their apartment or who wore the wrong brand of underwear. The trouble with sex is that it's unironic and earnest, and the number one commandment of hipness is that you must be ironic at all times. If you write any breathy scenes in which his cock was hot and hard, ooh ooh ooh, you risk looking unsophisticated, like you showed up at a reading at KGB bar wearing a hot pink polyester slipdress from the Victoria's Secret catalog. Music has gone in the same stupid direction. Compare Beck's album "Midnite Vultures" with Tom Waits' "Nighthawks at the Diner," which I consider the sonic equivalent of Philip Roth. "Midnite Vultures" is a sexy album. But you weren't supposed to be turned on by it, the critics said, and I felt like an uneducated hick every time I imagined that Beck really did wanna get with me and my sister and wasn't just making fun of people who shopped at JC Penney. Maybe it's no accident that my Gen-X female protagonist gets with a Roth and Waits fan 20 years older than she is, and keeps running back to him after not being fulfilled by guys her own age.
--JLE
09/13

I think you missed one big point- young writers' parents are still alive.
--KS
09/12

Also, Ms. Gabriele fails to mention that she's going to be excerpted in the new "Best American Non-Required Reading" series edited by none other than Mr. Dave Eggers, even though she's a Canadian....hello? Talk about biting the hand that feeds and pays you....
--
09/12

...everyone has to rent "Betty Blue" and be happy... ...it's no big deal in or out 'cause if yOu aren't into the story you aren't into the characters and if you aren't into the characters you don't care if they get laid or not... ...so YOU might as well. lisa, i like you, and even want you for your moxie (and that third B.Mary), but you don't have to attack nerve to show that you (and nerve) are cool (and self-criticizing.) if you want a critique--tell nerve this--you cannot hire it. let us do it. tell nerve just to try harder to warm us up, open us up and let us get into you and let you stretch us. if you fail to follow-through we'll let you know. the psuedo-humility of self-criticism is a hustle.
--jh
09/12

wellll! Got me thinking...and writing... Foreplay - A Reader's Guide Do not give me five minutes with your fingers twisting at my nipples. No, that will not do at all. Nor do I want an assault on my nether regions, your breath vehement and alcoholic at my ear. My GOD, what do you think I am, a vending machine? I need time, dear lover, time to get comfortable, time to get horizontal, time to get my juices optimal. I would never, unless under extreme urgency like a flood coming or the Spanish Inquisition (or parents in the other room) tear at your belt buckle, hoist your cock out of its Hanes shell, and mount. Well, maybe I would but that’s just after the beginning, after the Victorian courting procedures involving lengthy emails and simmering innuendo, after first and second and third base have been stolen in back seats and late-night booty calls, after movies and dinners and after you have kissed me long and hard. Then maybe I will approve of this batten-down-the-hatches sex I know you love, that whoa-nelly-a-storm’s-a-brewin’ fucking that makes us dash indoors like the skittish breeders we are. Then it’s alright to twist and pin and squirm and squint and truncate what might be in the night, to you, an overlong procedure. Not now, though, or ever if we can make this work accordingly. Because it is this that keeps me awake at night, shimmying like a hula girl on a humming dashboard. A thumb drawing, meticulously, the curve made by a juxtaposing hip. The timid orchid scent of an opening eyelid. The musk convinced out of the pre-dawn sheets, when we wake and are awakened by the waking. Your hunger coupled with my hunger coupled with the music we are capable of orchestrating, and the beauty of the metronome in all of that. The conversation your tongue could make with my lower back. What I would do if given the time to articulate the syllables resting in your collarbone.
--ms
09/12

I wrote a book. It has plenty of sex in it. Some of the kind that you hate, some of the kind that you like. It's just a matter of finding it. www.whoisthelistener.com -- read the first three chapters. It comes out next Summer. All best.
--JC
09/12

that was the best article about writing i have read in a long time.
--pd
09/12

Quite brilliant...and proves what I've been saying for a while, that Salon, Slate, et al, don't hold a candle to Nerve, especially since those site would never have the balls to be so self-critical. Keep up the great work. (p.s. I stopped reading Vice sometime last year, not sure why, but it stopped speaking to me...and I'm only 23.) Bravo.
--MMC
09/11

This article made me glad I don't have the slightest idea what books are cool to my generation. I couldn't agree more with what Lisa had to say about Nerve. This magazine has more than its fair share of elitist crap. For example; Em and Lo taking a picture of some women's mullet in a bar while on their road trip. Who gives a shit about someone's hairstyle? Nerve is definitely caught up in how hip it is. I do give them credit for printing an article that puts them down.
--l*h#
09/10

I just read a book of short stories that had some of the best sex scenes I've read in a while and wanted to pass title along to Lisa Gabriele. It's called "My Life in Heavy Metal," by Steve Almond. Thanks, Mac
--mm
09/10

I realize that he's of the wrong generation, and oh-so-controversial, but Michel Houllebeqc is extraordinarily successful at combining brilliant prose with sex scenes that are even more prolific than they are good. They are rarely mind-blowing - they're often fairly matter-of-fact: but isn't sex, far too often? Anyway, anyone who reads Nerve and hasn't checked out Platform yet really should. How many books can make you wince, smile, and hard all in the same chapter?
--EM
09/10

Great article. Bring on the literary porno. Another reading suggestion: practically anything by Canadian author Douglas Glover. His female characters especially tend to be completely aware of their bodies, adventerous, and sexy. And Glover's prose is simply beatufiul. His latest novel, Elle, opens with a wonderful dirty/funny sex scene.
--sm
09/10

Houellebecq? The French are still dirty...
--DJG
09/10

Hi Lisa. Enjoyed your article about young novelists scared of sex, and yes, I think it's true, many writers do shy away from it. But Lordie, some don't. In fact, one reviewer called my novel (DREAM of the BLUE ROOM, MacAdam/Cage 2003) "a moral wasteland," citing too much sex. You know, like when the narrator seduces the Mormon. Or when she has sex, at the ripe old age of 32, with the even riper 55-year-old fellow in the raquetball court of a ship traveling up the Yangtze. Or when she has sex by the pond with her best friend Amanda Ruth. Etc. But I don't think sex in a novel works if it's just there to titillate--it has to do something more, have some deeper implication about the characters. Sex, if done well, can be both very detailed and very melancholy at the same time, an unsettling and thought-provoking moment in the narrative. Thanks for a great article! http://www.michellerichmond.com
--
09/10

Dear Lisa Gabriele, GREAT article. I love new fiction and I like sex and it's sad to me that I have to read Philip Roth to read a good book about what sex means. (Actually we need our female Philip Roth- a woman in her later years writing about sex... maybe that'll be me in twenty years. Also, thanks for recommendations of books I wouldn't have heard of.
--TS
09/10

Absolutely the best article I've ever read on nerve.com - in no small part because Gabriele takes the hand that feeds her to task. Courage to say it and courage to print it, because it leaves a bit of egg on your collective face. Cool. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who's not buying what McSweeney's has to sell. One part of me would love to own all of those expensive volumes. The rest of me considers Dave Eggers a coyly preening prat, not nearly as aw-shucks as he'd have you believe - and if I don't like the daddy, I'll probably hate his kids. The new hipster novelists and short story authors do seem to have a common thread: young, white, middleclass, curiously disaffected, aware of that disconnection yet unable / unwilling to do anything about it - and yet it doesn't mean that they don't care. They can and do write moving works that touch my heart and on occasion make me cry. But they've never turned me on. Not once. Thank you, Lisa Gabriele, for articulating why. off to a used bookstore, fiction section, G.
--KLS
09/10

you have an excellent point. sometimes things are better when they aren't left to the imagination because sometimes the imagination has shortcomings. on a side note, four years ago, i read the piece that you wrote for vice and it helped me immensely. thank you. (and i'm sure every partner i've had since thanks you as well.)
--kp
09/10

People aren't writing sex because IT'S HARD, and yes, I do mean that in both ways. Good sex writing is first of all, descriptive. Good descriptive writing of any type is difficult, and when one adds in the intimacy that is inherent in discussing sexuality, it becomes that much more demanding. Then there's the fact that writing about sex is a turn-on. I can't count the number of times I knocked off writing a sex scene in order to relieve a little sexual tension. The flip side of this, of course, is that once you get that release, writing about it suddenly seems more sticky than sexy.
--ML
09/10

I laughed, I cried, I went looking for old Harold Robbins novels. Good writin'!
--do
09/09

Preach on sister! But, it's not all the fault of writers. I mean, I personally know quite a few writers, including myself, who are writing filthy, joyous, exuberant novels- lots of them- and frankly, we can't even get a rejection letter out of the publishing houses or literary agencies. All they want are "genre" novels in which there's a rash of child killings that has police baffled (ugh!) or "serious" novels wherein bitchy assexual college nerds moan about how dehumanizing it is to buy groceries (double ugh!). I mean, let's face it, Henry Miller would have laughed his head off at the Jonathan Safran Foerses of the world, probably while inappropriately groping their dates. So, I agree- look in Canada, check out self-published authors, but by all means, avoid books written or published in cultural dead zones like NYC.
--RF
09/09

This is damned good writing. I'm gonna go buy her book.
--rtn
09/09

Gaaaawd, cream MY ass and let me die in a grave!
--pete
09/09

Fuck YESSSSSSSSSSSS Finally. I am a little post-meeting-drunk to be cogent, but thank you Nerve again....it's been one and a half years since I posted but here I go. Yes and yes.
--
09/09

This is exactly the sort of stuff I love Nerve for - your essay is right on the money when it comes to contemporary (read: boring) fiction. In an age that is about 1000 times more accepting of libertine tendencies (tendencies that have always existed), when stephen king can write the goriest murder scenes and movies depict the most graphic drug montages, our literature shies further and further away from anything close to a good fuck.
--YHD
09/09

On the MONEY. Been thinking the same thing myself (about that Meloy book, too, though I did like it, a lot...), So not overtly, not as obviously, just felt something was missing from a lot of the books I've read in the past few years....hmmm. Maybe, you, my dear, need to rectify this?? Judging from your other stuff, looks like you could. (Yes I Googled the Linda Gondelle name, and yes that blow job article is still posted. Natch. Oh, and nice.) waddayasay?
--psj
09/09

Good point. It seems to me that American writers of books, TV and movies are adept at either titillation or porn and the vast soft (or hard) terrain inbetwixt is still virgin. Lolita and The Lover were foreign born writers and Fear of Flying seemed expose-porno... as for Portney my complaint is that is was so perverted-feeling. Perhaps the long arm of the purtians still has a chokehold on us.
--ss
09/09

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