Writing Ugly

Hélène Cixous has described the act of writing as becoming "a thing with pricked-up ears." She describes doing this work at night: "night becomes a verb. I night." By turning ugliness into a verb, as Cixous does with nighttime, this chapter considers what it might mean "to ugly" when writing. It explores the experience of inhabiting unsettling, resistant, anxious, uncomfortable-in other words "ugly"-spaces whilst writing. It makes a case for the value of encounters with the ugly in one's writing practice and how abiding with, or deliberately turning towards such states is not only a sound method of working but provides an important counter narrative to the social drive to rid ourselves of the unpleasant. It asks: What is "ugly" writing? What does it mean "to ugly" in the context of writing? And in what ways might considering ugliness as part of one's writing practice enable a renewed thinking about what it is to write? Drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literature it makes a case for the veracity of ugliness-not only politically but as a methodology or practice.