It was Peter Greenaway's 1996 bestseller "The Pillow Book" that first sparked my interest in body writing. I'm not sure if ‘body writing' is the correct term, or if it's even a real definition, but it is the phrase I use to describe the art of writing on one's own body (or that of another) with any medium you can imagine. Paints, pens, markers, ink, chocolate sauce, nail polish, make-up pencils, blood. Anything that will bind sentiment to skin is acceptable.

The book, along with the movie of the same name, are loosely based on the 1st century classic by Sei Shonagon, a Japanese gentlewoman. It is about a young girl named Nagiko, the daughter of a calligrapher who writes the story of creation on her face each year for her birthday. When she grows up, Nagiko searches for the perfect lover, one who will write beautiful words on her skin. She meets a British translator, who encourage her to write one of her manuscripts on his body instead. Language is no barrier as they scrawl each other with Arabic love poems and Chinese arithmetic. Both the movie and the book are absolutely captivating; the movie plays like a work of art, and the book reads like a movie. It is mesmerizing, and I quickly became enchanted.

For a lover of words, body writing is both a spiritual encounter and an erotic one, depending on the person you're marking. Seven years ago I had my first experience with this type of body art when my then-girlfriend and I bought three black eyebrow pencils at CVS and wore them down to nubs with our frantic scribbling, the heat from our bodies melting the tips faster than we could write.

What separates body writing from tattooing is that whereas tattoos are permanent and long lasting, body writing is temporary, it is transient. If you don't like the plot you can go back and erase, you can rewrite and redraw until you've found the message that best suits your body's meaning. Also, because it can be done by any literate person, body writing is so much more intimate. It is usually strangers who give us our tattoos, in the bright white lights of a tattoo parlor. But when the medium is a simple black pen it can be wielded by a friend or a lover in the privacy of your own home, under a soft glow, in a bedroom.

Body writing has been the subject of numerous art projects in recent years. Most notably, Shelley Jackson's SKIN Project titled "Ineradicable Stain", which began in 2003, calls for one word out of her 2,095 word story to be tattooed on the skin of volunteers across the country until it forms a complete manuscript. Her philosophy behind the idea was if she could find 2,095 volunteers, great. If not, she would give a word to each participant and how ever many that ended up being would represent the final work. The book would be complete even if it did not encompass all two thousand of the original words. The folks at Yankee Pot Roast parodied this movement with their own Skin Project, where they wrote a story that spanned the length of one woman's body. Anna Fleshler was the subject of the body writing, and Seth Melnick took the exquisite photos.

The Words on Skin group at Flickr.com consists of 727 members showcasing 901 photos of words, quotes, phrases and paragraphs written on skin of all shapes, sizes and colors. Although some are permanent tattoos, the majority are temporary sentiments both bold in statement and beautiful in design.

Also on Flickr is a series of photos by Mark Velasquez titled "Thoughts you won't admit to". Written in vulnerable, black ink on naked and semi-naked bodies are the musings that have run through our heads like a mantra but have not often been given a voice. The photo set gives true meaning to the idea of wearing your heart on your sleeve. Sentiments include "I'm surprised at how much I miss you", "Try harder. I'm worth it." and my personal favorite "I'm not here to save you."

Finally, in the movie "Quills", a cinematic adventure starring Kate Winslet and Geoffrey Rush, the institutionalized Marquis de Sade takes to writing his thoughts in wine on his bedsheets when his paper, inkpot and quills are removed from his quarters as a punishment. Later, on the verge of madness, he begins writing on the flesh of his arms, legs and torso using his own blood as a medium. When the desire is strong enough, there is nothing that can quell the urge to write and record.