From ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’

“And why don’t you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven’t written. (And why I didn’t write before the age of twenty-seven.) Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it’s reserved for the great-that is for “great men”; and it’s “silly.”

Besides, you’ve written a little, but in secret. And it wasn’t good, because it was in secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn’t go all the way, or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come, we go and make ourselves feel guilty-so as to be forgiven; or to forget, to bury it until the next time.”

–Hélène Cixous

She is right, I have personally always felt that way. But now I’m the same age Cixous was when she started to write, and I’m finding I can’t escape it anymore. I’m encouraged by her words, urging me to finally take ownership of my body and my mind and my work.

Thanks,Hélène.