Writers understand that there is a thin line between that which is largely considered acceptable content and that which is not. Some things live in this sort of gray area, like the tropics to the equator or the habitable zone around our sun. Others are close enough to the line that one might catch some flak from family or friends. Then there are the things on and beyond the line; and if you go far enough, leaving the relative warmth of questionable content and heading deeper into the shade, you will eventually enter the realm of anonymous publishing and unclaimed pseudonyms.

Truth be told, I have always written on the line – even at a fairly young age. I like the line. I enjoy being near it. It feels dangerous to explore the emotions that drive us to the edge of our comfort zone, to imagine which would put us over, and how it might feel to fall. Writing about those things seems considerably safer than actually being in the moment. Depending how far one’s imagination roams, however, the possibility of being drawn over the line in reality intensifies. There is a point at which life will begin to mimic art, and that point is always far more accessible to the artist than the observer. This risk is, for some, what makes the line so difficult to resist.

Writing is (or at least in my opinion, should be) a visceral experience. It starts with a spark – an idea, an image, a moment, a sensation, but it is only that – a spark. The real work is in seeing the story and understanding how deeply that story exists only because of the emotion generated by it. Stories are so thoroughly human. They live for no other reason than and are always about people – even a perspective of an inanimate object would have to be personified in order for its story to be told.

In this sense, we come to see that there is an emotional currency that is exchanged between writers and readers. Writers invest their time producing that which is intended to elicit the emotions their audience desires, while readers make their own investments in the hope of having a certain emotional experience. What any one reader desires is highly personal and quite varied, but in many cases it can be as simple as the desire to be happily entertained. With people seeking all kinds of responses, there are markets out there for everything – even for that which sits on and beyond the line.

In the case of writing on the line, the investment writers make is riskier. Aside from the obviously smaller markets and stronger need for anonymity, there is also the emotional risk. It is impossible to engage a reader in an emotion that is unexplored by the writer. Thus, we go, faithfully, courageously, into the wilds of the human mind. What we discover may be far too sensitive for us to write about, or perhaps we’ll uncover something in the gray area that touches us and we can embrace with careful arms. We might be appalled or enlightened. We can be turned off or turned on. Some writers will sit and stay, while others simply broaden their territory of enjoyable content and create diversity in their portfolio.

Call us literary thrill seekers, reckless writers lacking decorum or good sense, irreverent, or irresponsible, visceral junkies living vicariously through the intensities we’ve created in the name of art, people of passion to the extreme… Whatever judgments may befall us for our expeditions into places where society casts a disapproving shadow, we continue to go undaunted. Why? Because the greater the emotion, the greater the content; and who wants to write (or read) anything less than extraordinary?