I very much like writing about homosexual relations. I don't quite know why. Perhaps it's because I feel there's still so much to be said about them.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think all writers are armchair psychologists to some degree or another, and I think a character's sexuality is fascinating. It's a great way to really get at the root of their identity, because it's such a personal thing.
I love to write. I love it. I mean there's nothin in the world I like better, and that includes sex, probably because I'm so very bad at it.
Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things.
It's so much easier to write for a person in your life than to write for some imagined readership, so you write something that's more intimate and true.
It's easier to write from my own life, and it's also more fun. I always write about relationships, for instance, whether they're romantic relationships, friendships, encounters... there's always a lesson to be learned from them.
Early on, after gay liberation, there was an almost Stalinist pressure from gay critics and even gay readers to write about positive role models. We were never supposed to write negative things about gays, or else we were seen as collaborating with the enemy.
A straight writer can write a gay novel and not worry about it, and a gay novelist can write about straight people.
When I first started to write, I was aware of being queer, but I didn't write about it. Queer poems would probably not have been accepted by the editors I sent them to.
For me, writing is a love-hate relationship.
I like to write about women, not so much about the way they relate to men, but about the way they relate to each other. And I don't think anyone's really doing it.