Writing the Everyday Erotic | How & Why

"The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings" ~ Audre Lorde

Bear with me. I’m going to talk about the everyday erotic, and I am going to connect it directly to our upcoming pleasure writing intensive for paid members, and the embodied writing we’ll be leaning on to enliven and illuminate our work (and our lives) while we learn to write pleasure. If you’ve never written with us yet, this is the one not to miss, truly—you should definitely join us, even if it scares you. You’ll never find a safer space to take risks with your writing, and to expand your repertoire of tools for beautifully embodied writing.

But first, some relevant background, since I’ve just returned from AWP where I had the great pleasure (speaking of pleasure) of presenting a smashing panel with Gina Frangello, Amanda Montei, Rebecca Woolf, and Natashia Deon (all geniuses) to a huge and enthusiastic standing-room only crowd (thank you Denise Hoffner for getting these great photos, including a rare shot of me at the podium smiling!):

And I’ve been talking about.this AWP panel a ton since the idea first came to me—”Sex Beyond Survival: From Traumatic to Erotic to the Awkward In-Between”—because it’s such an urgent topic. And the panel was so damn good. Five writers, myself included, read excerpts of our own work selected specifically to exemplify intentional ways to write real sex, which I described this way (I wrote the panel proposal):

Gertrude Stein said, “Literature—creative literature—unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable." Maybe that's because sex is innately creative, powered by intimacy and expansiveness and by our divine and animal selves. Writing real sex reveals characters' primal wounds, yes, but also their secret desires, pleasures, and human vastness. Five multi-genre writers talk about writing that truly embodies and claims sex, with all its paradoxical harms, pleasures, and ecstasies of "life's longing for itself."

After our readings, each presenter took a few minutes to discuss the craft decisions she made in the scene she read aloud—decisions such as:

• Grammar and sentence structure that supported the sexual energy of the scene

• Ways in which the craft pushed against patriarchy and/or misogyny, or challenged other tropes or stereotypes

• Intentionally humanizing language

• Inclusivity of all bodies, genders, and ranges of human desires and experience

• Examples of embodied writing

Again, since I wrote the panel proposal and outline, these bullet points matter to me—and, from a purely craft perspective, that last one, embodied writing, matters perhaps most of all. I addressed it directly in my brief craft remarks regarding to my own reading (included below)¹, remarks which were based on these notes:

1. Using grammar/sentence structure to create this kind of sexual energy through rhythm and speed, so that even where the language and imagery aren’t overtly sexual, and to create a kind of energy in the language itself that even the white space and implication would be amplified

2. Sexuality can be complicated and exists within the fabric of our full, complicated lives, and in that way our lives and our sexual energy and experience—whether pleasurable or numb or traumatic—is just one set of threads in a bigger swath

3. Embodied writing—which for me means not writing about the body, but through the body, meaning through the senses, meaning simply to vividly and precisely portray, through language, the sensory experience of living in a body in the exterior world, which itself can be inherently sexual because we are animals

4. That brings me to the everyday erotic, where in all of these sensory experiences of the world can carry a certain sexual charge—sunshine on bare arms, lying on your back in the grass alone or next to someone else’s warm body, the smell of bread, the smell of sweat. Any one of these sensory experiences can, if articulated in a precise and particular enough way, can be intensely sexual, and I believe our writing benefits from an awareness of that kind of everyday eroticism. It amplifies our prose and enlarges these sensations and bodily experiences, bringing them into hyperfocus, not unlike what  Georgia O’Keeffe said about her flower paintings, which she insisted were not sexual, but rather, her effort to actually capture flowers as they really are, and force people to really see them. Writing with an awareness of the everyday erotic can do the same thing.

And there it is: the everyday erotic. This is really where my passion lies when it comes to the work of writing “real sex” as something that is natural to a human body and far, far more expansive than whatever happens (or not) in the bedroom. And the everyday erotic requires that we come to the page ready to write through our bodies, for that is where pleasure resides—even intellectual pleasures and emotional pleasures are felt in the body.

However, the truth is that many of us—so many of us—are woefully disconnected from our bodies and the sensations that live within them. Often this is because our bodies have experienced a great deal of pain, and we have learned to shield ourselves from the language of the body.

But to safely reunite with the body’s songs through safely noticing pleasurable sensations in the world (the everyday erotic) and articulating those pleasures on the page, can be hugely empowering—and also healing.

One young writer stood to ask a question at the end of our panel, a question about what kind of language to use when writing about sex (e.g., there are many names for male and female body parts). Rebecca Moore spoke eloquently about just writing in one’s own voice, using the language that is natural to us (or our characters, if writing fiction). And when I took the mic, I said something along the lines of how if we are going to write real sex, it starts several steps (or miles) back—to the simplicity of living in an animal body that is attuned to the exterior world. Indeed, if we are going to write real sex (or real anything) we just have to learn how to perceive the world through the senses, and express those accurate, truthful perceptions in language that awakens those same sensations for our readers.

We have to learn to feel. Then we must transfigure that feeling into language. Without this two-part process, real writing will remain terribly elusive.

If we cannot learn to notice and truly attune to pleasure, we will struggle to include elements of pleasure in our writing. The resulting absence of pleasure in the writing will weaken it and leave it less than true, for pleasure exists even in terrible circumstances.

Fortunately, when we do learn to notice and truly attune to pleasure, our writing will break open in beautiful, visceral ways, and—as a major bonus—we will greatly increase our own experience of pleasure, because what we pay attention to always, always grows.

This is the premise of our upcoming Writing in the Dark intensive: Writing Toward Pleasure.

Starting April 16, we’ll intentionally write toward pleasure beginning with paying more attention (which is harder than you think—we’re evolutionarily wired against doing so, which I wrote about here). We will actively seek sensory beauty, wildness, and depth.

You’ll find a fuller description below of how WITD intensives work, but in short, this intensive will be delivered in six Wednesday posts with readings, craft discussion, and inventive exercises. As always, we’ll have a vibrant exploration of our experience in the comments section, where we post snippets of our writing, talk about it, and share our lives as writers. We also cheer each other on and shepherd each other through these shared creative adventures.

The only reason I could write it like I did was because of Writing in the Dark—the lessons and the generous and beautiful support from you and Billie and in the comments and the small writing groups. I did not know much about the craft of writing before I started writing with WITD: containers, prompts that led me nowhere I'd ever been before, white space, earning a line, devastating, hot/cold, I didn't know how to do any of that. And then the support, love, holding, being seen--the container of this space—I didn't have any of that before either. I am not just a better writer for having spent time in this gorgeous and beautiful space, I am a better human. ~Jocelyn Lovelle, WITD member

I just realized that your teaching is like that: raw, disobedient, feral and also meditative and open. This is such a great space from which to teach. Made me fall in love with what's happening here. ~Laure Jouteau, WITD member

What Does It Mean To Write Toward Pleasure?

Pleasure starts with sensation. All pleasure is grounded somewhere in our sensory body—that is, experiences grounded in the five major senses (or our memories of experiences grounded in the five major senses, because these experiences are stored permanently in our cells).

Writing toward pleasure involves paying close attention to sensory pleasures—the sound of rain on the porch, the feeling of a baby sleeping on my chest, the stickiness of bread dough in my hands as I knead and pull, sitting next to my husband listening to “Chasing Cars” and getting lost in the sound, laying my head on his chest when he sings, running up a hill, feeling the burn in my thighs and lungs, the utter exhilaration and exhaustion that proves to me that I am alive, laughing with my adult kids about stupid and inappropriate things, laughing until my cheeks and ribs hurt, the feeling of Frannie snuggled up against my thigh as I write on my laptop, the sound of ocean waves, the rocking of those waves, the swell and fall of them, and the way that pulls me into all the other swells and falls inside of myself, or, for example, Ada Limon’s “obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains.” To name only a few.

What about sex?

For most people, sexual experiences are a powerful form of sensory pleasure, but this is not an erotica intensive—and despite the success of my AWP panel, I’m not actually qualified or prepared to facilitate an erotica writing intensive on Substack (maybe someday, but not now).

So while sexuality is not censored here, and while I celebrate the everyday erotic, I’d ask we be considerate that our writing not be graphic/explicit, and be mindful of restraint. As I have long taught (in the arena of trauma writing and the technique “writing hot cold”), what we do not say on the page can actually be more evocative than what we do say. So here, too, we’ll err toward less is more. If you’ve been at WITD for a while now in other intensives, you already know the vibe. If not, read other people’s comments and you’ll get the drift easily. And if in doubt, probably don’t.

Anyway, the range of sensory pleasure to be celebrated and reveled in is so wide and expansive, and has so much inextricable overlap with every system of our bodies, that there is rarely any full separation between one form of sensory pleasure and another. This, too, will be a rich and fascinating intersection to explore in language. Through attention, language, and articulation, we will awaken and energize our pleasure receptors and the writing that stems from those most alive places.

Ultimately, to write toward pleasure, we will need to engage in embodied writing, and engaging in embodied writing enlivens all the other writing (and living) we will do.

What is Embodied Writing?

We experience the world through our bodies. Each and every sensory impression forms our bank of experiences, experiences that help us know who we are in the world. And our cells hold these records of the past, awareness of the present, and imaginings of the future. These embodied sensations form the basis of writing that electrifies the primal exchange we continually experience with the world.

This is a visceral phenomenon. Visceral means “relating to the viscera,” or your internal organs. It also means “relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect.” And research—especially that of James Pennebaker at University of Texas at Austin—shows that writing heals us, literally (meaning on a physical level).

If you are more curious about embodied writing, here are some posts I’ve shared in the past, around the time of our Visceral Self intensive, to give a sense of how I approach writing through the body, which begins with the senses:

1. “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final ... Nearby is the country they call life.” ―Rainer Maria Rilke

2. I Was A Child in A Child’s Body

3. Some Might Have Called the Roses Garish

4. This is My Body, Filling My Body

5. Sleeping Birds Are Vulnerable

6. Water, Stories, The Body

7. As soon as I notice feeling unmoored, I try to pull myself back into my body, like returning home

What’s Included In Toward Pleasure

Paid members of the Writing in the Dark community receive:

• Six Toward Pleasure posts starting April 16, with short readings (poems and excerpts), discussions, and sensory writing exercises

• Access to our bustling comments section where, each week, participants share questions, insights, and snippets of work in progress, and where Jeannine and Billie also participate.

Founding members also receive:

• Voice Memos/Video posts (we’re planning more of these in 2025!)

• Live Salons on Zoom

All participants will gain:

• More ways of toward writing pleasure

• A keener awareness of the balance of pleasure and pain, positive and negative, in their work

• Powerful embodied craft principles and specific tools to apply long after the the intensive is over

• A collection of new work in progress (scenes, fragments, poems, flash) that you can continue to develop on your own 

• A deeper understanding of the ways in which embodied writing techniques and attention to pleasure enliven our prose, and tools for engaging the sensory body in your writing practice.

Some Things People Have Said About Writing in the Dark Intensives

• I have learned much from you in the last year, through your weekly posts and seasonal intensives. The depth and quality of your content is unmatched on Substack (IMHO). That, plus the network of subscribers you have garnered is why I look forward to Wednesdays! (And Mondays for Lit Salon and Thursdays for the new Threads!) I have been involved in workshops that cost more but provide less. Thanks for all you are producing and the community you have created in an effort to bring the out our best writing selves.

• As always, there's more to these exercises than I first anticipate.

• I’m thoroughly enjoying this challenge and truly appreciate all the ways you’re helping each of us become more thoughtful and evocative writers.

• It's actually been super helpful to work through the exercises in quick succession, like a little writing course... But so much more inspiring and thoughtful and generous and fun than any I've taken before. THANK YOU Jeannine, you are brilliant.

• These assignments are like magic.

• Your post gave me a giant AHA moment. You’ve unlocked my understanding of tension and storytelling in memoir.

• This post was wonderful. Love the first quote especially. I had a couple of deeper realizations with this exercise.

• Reading all the comments on my writing today, so full of enthusiasm and encouragement, really made my day! One of the things I will treasure most about this challenge is learning to trust myself and others with my writing.

What to Expect From Writing Toward Pleasure:

• You can expect, if you work every exercise, to complete the intensive with several original, interesting, and intriguing scenes/fragments that you can either work into a complete story or expand or revise into separate pieces or use as scenes in some other work in progress. And you can expect these scenes/fragments to differ greatly from anything you might have written otherwise.

• You can expect every exercise to invite you to engage your body and to revel in language and expand your understanding of how embodied writing techniques supercharge our prose.

• You can expect to be encouraged to participate each week—which is a very lively experience—or work at your own pace, or start the intensive later or repeat it, or whatever works best for you, because all of the posts will be tagged and permanently archived in order.

• You can expect (to the point above) to be encouraged to embrace zero-waste writing, where everything interesting can become something more than itself now or later.

• You can expect to be invited and encouraged to record your experiences as part of the process—and you can, if you share your thoughts in the chat or comments, expect to bump into me and Billie Oh there, participating in the conversation.

• You can expect each exercise to be accompanied by craft writing and resources.

• You can expect the exercises to be clear, doable, and scaffolded over the 6 weeks in a way that allows you, if you like, to “arranges the bits” toward an interesting suggestion of wholeness.

• You can expect to amass an array of highly usable craft tools you can apply forever.

•  You can expect to be introduced to several specific, potent literary approaches to deepen and illuminate your relationship with language.

• You can expect to make discoveries about yourself and your life.

• You can expect to be introduced to some less familiar readings as well as some crowd favorites.

• You can expect exercises that are specific and directive and clear, but also a bit feral and unpredictable. You can expect (as always in WITD) exercises that honor the truth of living in bodies that breathe and move and laugh and cry, while also living in a world that breathes and moves and laughs and cries, while also having unruly minds that are constantly escaping to the past and the future even when what we most need is to attend to this exact moment in order to live lives that are, as Mary Oliver said, “particular and real.”

• You can expect to be imperfect, and for that to be perfectly okay.

• You can expect to come out of this challenge with new ideas about what writing can be, and how it can feel.

• You can expect with new ideas of who you are, who you are becoming, and what is possible for you as a writer.

These are the main points—but of course these things evolve and change along the way. But I’m happy to answer questions if you have them! Share thoughts into the comments or respond via email to this post. I can’t wait to start writing toward pleasure with all of you in April—hearing your voices, celebrating this thing we do, this miraculous, infinite, exasperating, enlivening, and ultimately freeing thing called language.

Love,
Jeannine

1. JEANNINE OUELLETTE Excerpt from The Part That Burns, a memoir

There is more, though. More than a single bright Sunday in November, one pretty student teacher with impossibly smooth hair and a wide smile. What happened before that day was how I came apart after Max was born, how the pieces of me pulled away from each other like poorly laid sod on parched Wyoming soil. Even as I put myself back together, those pieces never fit the same as before. Max had colic, wanted only me. So I held him twenty-four hours a day, tied to my body in his baby bundler, and vacuumed the living room for hours because it was the only thing other than nursing that soothed him. If anyone else, including his father, grandparents, early childhood teachers, neighbors, grocery clerks, even Sophie, so much as looked at Max, he might cry.

And I blamed myself for his colic, because of that scary woman at the therapy group, the moaner who threatened to bring a gun and shoot us all in that awful fluorescent basement. Bang, bang, bang, she said, cocking her finger. I brought my unborn son with me into that den of despair and wrath and goneness, I carried him there inside my spoiled body, week after week, to endure what was beyond anyone’s ability to endure. I did that to my perfect boy, and now I could never, ever take it back.

That first year, Max cried and nursed until my nipples bled and scabbed and bled again. I contracted a raging case of mastitis. A storm raged in me, spiraled right through fall into winter. Snow fell, snow melted. When new growth poked through the mud, so, too, did memories. Groves and thickets of the past, pushing into the present. Spring warmed to summer and summer fell to au-tumn. Winter, in its cruelty, came again. Now it was not just Mafia and my childhood self who intruded, but also fresh knowledge of the woman I had allowed myself to become. During those long winter days snowed in with two small children, I slowly recalled things from my recent past. Incredulous things. Like that stretchy black bodysuit I wore for John on our first wedding anniversary at the Hotel Luxe, when Sophie was not quite six weeks old, my lumpy post-partum body stuffed into that tube of Lycra with its sexy crotch hole for my still raw episiotomy scar from the jagged knife wound where the anonymous male doctor had sliced all the way through the tough muscle of my vaginal wall and every other layer of muscle to follow until the blade came out the other side, leaving not only a gash but a swollen bruise the size of a grapefruit. That’s what John had said the day we got home from the hospital with our firstborn, what he said when I asked him to look down there because it hurt so much I couldn’t breathe, what he said before he turned white and slid down the wall: the size of a grapefruit.

Time and again that second winter with Max, when he was one year old and still fragile— “highly sensitive,” the books said—it all came flooding back, that body suit and firm mattress, my young husband desperate to come like a freight train, six weeks is a long time, are you okay, me floating out and away. I became so electric that winter that if Sophie so much as nipped me, one little bite that barely hurt, just an attempt, really, not even a real bite, I would throw her favorite book across the room and smash its binding. That March, Baby Girl brought in fleas, fleas that chose me as their human host, red bites up and down my ankles and calves, diatomaceous earth—chemicals will kill you—coating our wood floors, clinging to the soles of our feet, sticking to our clothes, grinding into our sheets. Finally, the sunny morning when Sophie eyed her baby brother in his adorable striped rugby suit, pink and blue—he was eighteen months and walking now, in that teetering and tentative way that toddlers walk, so fragile you can blow them down with one strong puff. Sophie watched him quietly and long as he toddled his way through a shaft of light on the oak floor. Then she shoved him hard into the corner of the banister. The edges of the room darkened around me, closed into a shadowy tunnel, through which I lunged to slap my firstborn daughter across the cheek. I watched my handprint bloom like a hibiscus.

I wanted to die.

What happened next was swift and irrevocable—its own kind of doorway. “You know, I lied,” I told John in the middle of another fight about sex, and how angry he was over not getting it. Angry that I “had two legs and should know how to use them.” Angry that I was, as he now said, frigid. “I lied and lied,” I said again, as Max nursed greedily with his whole body. “I never had nine orgasms with you back in the beginning. I never even had one. And I still haven’t.”

I thought of my therapist, what she said about women and sex. “You could at least try,” I said meanly. “Slow down and use your hands.” But that’s not all. God, he was a hard worker, my young husband. A two-hour round-trip commute to an inner-city middle school by day, two shifts a week at the night school, too, walking through the door after ten o’clock for what? Laundry. Although with Max, at least, we had a diaper service. I had demanded that, now that I demanded things. Still, diapers were nothing in a sea of everything, and whatever else needed doing, John did it. He did.

But that didn’t stop me from telling him how I’d been pretending. It didn’t stop me from pushing him away from me with all the force I could muster.