My writing group is going to be reading this, so I'd better watch my style. Demonstrate diligence. Short sentences contain tension. Create suspense. Control pace, invite interest. Language in a taut coil. Instant thought. Contemporaneous. Surprising. What will happen next?
Long sentences, on the other hand, relax the reader, reassure them that nothing untoward is going to happen, that the story is in full flow, by painting a word picture of feelings or sounds or symbols that are not so much about action, but a more lyrical, complex mood seducing the reader to let go of a sense of time, and to float along through the subtleties of detail to a more impressionistic, textured experience, one which lingers as an aftertaste, like good wine, but which, like wine, may involve a gentle challenge to develop one's palate, to discriminate with experience and instinct.
Of course it's not how you say it, it's what you're saying. The group I've been attending for over a year now, with various people coming and going along the way, is for gay men; and it's not been so much about learning tricks of the trade as listening to each other find our voices, through various exercises designed to simply get the pen scribbling.
Our last meeting started off innocently enough, with an exercise on describing our first love, from childhood; gently our wise facilitator guided us through as full a recollection as possible. It only became apparent, after people started reading their pieces out, how deeply affecting the memory was for each of us; and pain choked many voices as that ancient ache was revisited.
It's the speaking of it that is denied us; not the experience, which is probably more or less the same for everyone. Except for those rare couples who met as childhood sweethearts, the rest of us in the human race all remember the first, deepest cut of lost love. But most who are heterosexual find that their loss meets with sympathy and understanding from family and friends; it often leads to the first grown-up conversation with parents about what love is all about, with the tearful or morose teenager being assured that it will pass, that they'll meet another girl or boy, and that no, it won't feel like that again, but it will be different. The pain is talked through; it's understood that it's part of life, and through the reactions of others, the young heartbroken one lives to love another day, and accept something fundamental about the unfairness of life.
Listening to the six other gay men tell their stories, it became apparent that that normalising of experience had been denied us in our childhoods and adolescence. Especially for those older members of the group, but not uniquely, it seemed that little or no such processing of that first hurt had happened. There had been no early reassurance that it would pass; there had been no opportunity for friends and family to share their own experiences, and so strengthen the bonds of communication. For most of us, it was a shameful, confusing, disturbing secret love that had been found and lost. We learned early on to keep our sorrows to ourselves, and in so doing found ourselves subtly attached to the unreal concept of a fair world "out there", that, bafflingly, excluded us.
As someone who's been learning the "talking cure" of counselling over the past few years, one of the most important things I've realised about early hurt is not so much about the cruelty of childhood; everyone remembers painful episodes, everyone remembers times when the world felt unsafe and threatening when they were young. The important factor in getting over it is the repair work that happens after the event; when a mother apologises for being cross, explaining she wasn't well, or when a father makes up for being away for so long and talks about work pressures. Such attempts at re-establishing communication are about telling the child that life is unfair sometimes, but there are reasons, and so the child learns that it's not their fault, a universal tendency among children.
Children can endure the most shocking hardships and bereavements, if there is someone around who can explain and listen and put it into some sort of meaningful context; it needn't be the parents, but a grandparent or a teacher will do; it's someone who can act as an understanding and sympathetic buffer for those inexplicably powerful youthful feelings of hurt and rage, someone whose interest in the child's development is not caught up with their own fears and insecurities. But it is rare, even now, that that person will have the experience of, or at least some helpful information about, same-sex love, to be able to listen without judgment, to comfort without pity. It is why, so often, gay people grow up ashamed in some inexplicable way about how they feel, how they love.

First love for each member of that writing group was for someone of their own sex. That's not a universal truth for gay men, of course; but it was true for us. Each of us discovered a richness about the memory that we had long forgotten; it's as if we had censored ourselves not to reflect, not to say what it was really like, a habit learned early. Perhaps it's why we're all trying to write now, to make up for that time when to speak was to invite embarrassment, isolation and ridicule, and perhaps even worse horrors.
There are many out there who are sick of hearing about homosexuality; the love that dared not speak its name now will not shut up. But each story that I heard the other night was different; each person loved in their own way, in their own time. In the rich silence that followed the last reading, the last strike of that mournful, beautiful bell, I realised that we, as gay men, have not yet spoken enough; for it is not until the diversity of our own voices has been heard that we can understand that our feelings are not generic and stereotypical, but as rich and interesting and as loving as a human being has a right to.