Write what you know

My final read-through and edit of the book.

It’s interesting how writing Naked on the Internet revealed to me what I know and most especially what I don’t know. Except I didn’t know the expanse and limits of what I know before I started writing the book. You know?

I wrote the chapter on porn first, and I thought I knew a lot about porn. I thought I knew so much that I outlined the chapter and the way it would move, the points I would make, before I did my interviews. Then I did the interviews. And I looked at the outline. And they didn’t match up very well, and I felt like a jerkbag, with my assumptions.

I interviewed almost eighty women for this book, and they taught me a lot, though I wasn’t able to quote them all. I took special delight and pride or collecting interviews from women with very different experiences of and opinions about the Internet, and sometimes putting them right next to one another in the text. High relief. Both are right and wrong, and that’s what makes it interesting.

I thought the process of writing this book would give me a better understanding of this whole Internet business. It did give me a deeper appreciation for the complexities, but I don’t feel like I solved anything. Maybe that means I’m a bad writer or an overly-stimulated, addled thinker. But in my gut I don’t think so, I think that wrapping this stuff into a nice bow would mean that I don’t know shit about writing or life or critical analysis (which may very well prove to be true anyway).

In some spots in the book I tried to do a little affirmative action and go out and seek the opinions of women whose perspectives I knew I was leaving out. But this wasn’t always (or even usually) possible. So there are limits, and they are points on which I expect to be critiqued on, and that is fine. Good, even.

I have a lot to do in the next six months before the book comes out, like get The Bi Apple out in the world and write my master’s thesis and a few other projects I’ve got in the works. But I’m itching to get it all out there, because I’m eager for the feedback… not the “Audacia is so smart!” kind (though that’s nice too, I won’t lie), but the critical, discussion-having, discourse-producing kind.
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I’m slowly emerging from my writer’s cave. This week, post-handing things in, has been weird. I haven’t felt like doing much except reading, lounging, walking around my city and trying to adjust to having a new job in a library. So I’m trying to re-assimilate into the world enough that I’m ready to fly to Vegas and do the Adult Entertainment Expo on Tuesday. Yikes. I have some packing to do.

Also, I did finally fill up the photo album on the main page. It doesn’t have as many nudie pictures as it did before, but it’s got lots of fun pictures of events and such - its going to be more photo bloggy and less portfolio-ish in the future since I’m not really modeling much anymore. Check it out here. The first page has two sets of photos I haven’t put up before - one of me in red (where you can check out my long black hair and even a pic without glasses), and some casual shots of me in Brooklyn.