K D Grace

Happy Masturbation month, everyone! I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am. Aside from the obvious, May is my favorite month for a lot of reasons. The flowers are blooming and the birds are singing … and mating themselves silly and everything is suddenly made new. As is always the case in this glorious month, I can’t keep myself from thinking about those new beginnings and the fact that many of them seemingly come from nothing. 

At the moment, I’m finishing the final rewrite of Blind-Sided, the second novel in the Medusa Consortium series. Like all the Medusa tales, it’s a big book and, as I work through the final draft, reading it out loud as I go, occasionally I find myself wondering how we writers can create something out of nothing, from the tiniest seed of an idea. And that’s all any novel I’ve ever written is in the beginning. Honestly, I’m amazed at what results. But this is masturbation month, so how can I not think about the absolute pleasure I take in creating something out of nothing, in the solo act of sitting in front of a laptop for months and hammering out a tale that didn’t exist before. Oh yes, my dear friends, for me, writing a novel is very much self-pleasure.

The ancient Egyptians believed masturbation was a creative act in its own right. In the Heliopolis creation myth, the
god Amen rises from the primeval ocean and masturbates the divine son and daughter into existence. Then they, of course, populate the world. Even the Judeo/Christian myth of the first two chapters of Genesis, in which God speaks the world into existence, is a solo act. And what writer of stories and teller of tales can’t identify with ‘the word becoming flesh,’ or with the ritual of creating a world using nothing but words alone.

If creation is, in the great myths, masturbatory, then it makes sense that so many writers I’ve talked to, myself included, find their work, whether it’s erotic or not, to feel almost sexual. That leads me to wonder if perhaps the writing of story is a form of masturbation, a form of solo creation. Certainly for me, when I’m in the throes of story, completely in the thrall of something that seemingly came from nothing, there is a physical response, and it’s quite often arousing. But then how could the visceral euphoria of being The Creator not be a total turn-on?

A writer friend once told me she’d had a novel rejected by an editor who said that, while it was beautifully written, there was no blood on the page. Every novel I’ve ever read that sticks with me has demanded something physical from me. I’ve felt the story in my body and not just had an awareness of it in my mind. That being the case, it’s not much of a leap to think the power of the written word, the power of story, comes as much from a writer’s body is it does from the mind. It also isn’t much of a leap to think that writing from the gut stimulates the libido. When I’m under the spell of story, the physicality of the experience, the way I feel it below my waist, is as much a part of the creative process as the hours spent in front of the computer. 

While I can completely see writing a story as a masturbatory act, even a curmudgeonly introvert like me needs the social connection with people, and the flip side of my masturbatory acts is that they’re also exhibitionist acts. Creation, from a writer’s point of view, may take place in solitude, but the resulting story is very much meant to be shared far and wide. While story telling is an act of love for me, it’s not complete until I can share my creation with someone else. What comes from my isolation is meant to be exposed for the world to see. I suppose like the gods of the myths, I want adoration. I want people to look and see and gasp in awe at the power of what I’ve created. (Can’t you just hear my sinister laugh as I plan world domination?)

Masturbation as a creative act, to me that’s what Masturbation month is all about. There are connections, deep connections to the Self and to the mysterious creative force curled at the center of all of us that, I’m convinced, can only be accessed through solo acts of exploration and pleasure. Those places within us are places only we can discover, and the discovery is, indeed a cause for celebration.