Writing about naked people…

I just realised that writing about naked people is odd.

I reviewed a part of one of the stories I’m working on and I noticed that they appear clothes-free in my imagination, but they’re not ‘naked’. They’re as they are and should be.

The odd thing for me starts when I put my nude characters near clothed ones. That’s when the difference has to show again. And I think that’s the trick in good naturist writing; you get lost in the story-world and you don’t get confronted with ‘they were nude’ or ‘they were not wearing clothes’. They simply were, or are, or will be, and then the textile comes in to ‘ruin the moment’. (Not really, but I assume you understand this.)

I find it interesting, looking at things from a distance, to see how normal something becomes once you’re into it and you live the life, and how fast.

We’re heading into the bad-weather season now. Colder weather, and the need for clothing will be upon everyone except for those naturists who graduated polar bear academy. Clothes become normal then, for me, unless I can avoid them, like in a spa or a sauna. And once I’m in such a place, being nude is immediately normal, and clothes appear alien.

I find it hard to write and imagine nude people when I’m clothed. There’s something inherently wrong in that, so whenever I work on the stories, I want to be free of the textile confines. Otherwise it might feels like a happy vegan butcher. Okay, maybe this comparison is way off, but again, I assume that you understand this.

Maybe Will or Robert have a similar experience, that writing naturist fiction makes naked people the norm, whereas the clothies are the odd ducks. For me, however, it is like that, and that won’t change.