Saturday, June 09, 2007

The Joy of Writing Sex

Sex between a man and a woman can be absolutely wonderful - provided you get between the right man and the right woman. ~ Woody Allen

I had a friend email last night about writing sex scenes. She's not a romance writer, but thinks she needs to include one in her current WIP and asked my opinion on writing them. She mentioned something that all of us have certainly thought about: What would my mother think?

The romance I write is fairly sweet, BUT (in my longer works) I do let my characters have some heavy foreplay now and then. I get a kick writing those scenes. Thus far, I haven't written a sex/love scene to fruition, mostly because the stories haven't lent themselves to this. I really prefer, prude that I am, that my characters don't have sex outside of marriage. And, since my stories pretty much end up with my characters either agreeing to marry or with the wedding itself, I haven't had to tread there.

But... in the back of my mind, I always think about who will read the story. My mom I don't worry about -- we have a good, open relationship. She's not that person hovering over me. But I do have them, a whole bunch of them, and it's frustrating to try to get past that feeling of judgement.

I've read that one of the questions most romance writers get is some version of, "Is your sex life that hot?". Why do they focus on the sex? They don't ask, "Have you ever been lost in the Brazilian jungle with drug runners hot on your heels?" or "Have you ever been stalked by a psychic serial killer with a fetish for red high heels?" or whatever other strange plot point you may have.

I don't have any real point to this, it was just on my mind. I'm functioning on very little sleep, so it's amazing that there's anything on my mind at all.

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Places I've Been:



create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out our California travel guide

Technically, I've been through more -- but it was only a drive by en route to NH from Colorado. I've listed the states where I actually got out of the car and did something.

What about you? How many states have you visited?

5 comments:

Allie Boniface said...

Ooh, I like this link. I wanted to post it on my blog, but the map was too big and I couldn't figure out how to downsize it. Anyway, I've been to 41. And I don't count drive-throughs either. I have to be in a state for 24 hours in order for it to count.

Anonymous said...

I did that map quite some time ago. I think I counted even the states where I got out of the car at gas stations. *g*

All the states I missed, though, with the exception of South Carolina (and I don't know how I missed it) all the states I've not been to are in the Northwest, the North Central Plains, and the Northeast.

anno said...

I've only been to twenty three states if you don't count the ones I've only driven through. Somehow I've managed to miss most of the eastern coast, except for Maine, Massachusetts, DC, and Virginia, and just about all of the plains states. Maybe a road trip is in order?

Dru said...

I've been to 24 states and all but three of them were all on the east coast.

Alice said...

I felt a strange comfort when I read your post about writing sex, on the point about sex within marriage. Good post, this one.