I've written love scenes for a living all my professional life. That's nearly four decades…and totals more love scenes (and many more love affairs) than this lady has had. Ever.
At Her Service
And the questions I've fielded about how and why and what I do have run the gamut from the 'Why write about sex?' to the (age-old) 'Do you and your husband practice everything before you write it?' to 'How do you know how different people have sex if you don't sleep around/practice new positions/take drugs/frequent porn shops?'"
Early in my career, these questions bothered me. I was young, I was new at the art, and I was…well…tender. So was the romance genre. And erotic romance was not a contender in what we now know to be the 'mainstream' fiction market, easily accessible and suitably priced. Authors and readers of romance in any form in the 80s were fighting for the right to read what they wanted under the banner of "By, For and About Women." Romance with a bit of explicit sex thrown in or just behind-closed-doors was about 30 percent of the US market and I do believe in similar digits in the UK. When it expanded within ten years to 40 percent, and in another five years, to 50 percent of mass market fiction and inched higher, romance had respect among those who wrote it and read it. Money does that for you.
Suddenly, the genre was diversifying. It grew like a whirlwind with historical settings, or suspense, time travel, paranormal and sci-fi subplots. With that came the chance for authors to go to cocktail hours and discuss that aspect of their writing without the wink- and-nod that you were up to something naughty. Love and sex might not have ranked high on socially acceptable topics for the kindergarten playgroup or the Girl Scout directors' meetings, but those other types of plots and their research surely did. You could fend off the sly innuendo of your questioner with a discussion of how to kill someone with a dull knife or details on your new expertise in fencing. Might you demonstrate either for them?
But writing erotic romance brings an entirely new element into the picture. Erotic sex by its very definition means that the act of love or coitus is explicit in word, thought and certainly deed. No five-minute wonders are allowed in erotica. Not only would that word count not be worth any amount of money to the buyer, but frankly, I doubt it would be fulfilling to write, let alone read. Besides, while we may wish it were not so, the five-minute encounter is possible in real life. Perhaps even frequent! And this book I write, baby, is fiction.
Fiction with its fantasy. Fiction with its edge of truth. And believability. Fiction that must be as exciting to write, speaking personally for myself, as it is exciting to enjoy as a private, third-party reader. So I love letting it be romantic or raw or rabid.
And therein lies the rub. To go to your friends' dinner party and discuss sex toys probably won't inspire sterling supper conversation. To attend your college friend's wedding/anniversary/divorce gala and tell them you're writing your next ménage will put the attention on you, not the lady or man of the hour. A little attention to appropriate venues pays benefits.
First of all, as your friends and associates begin to ask you about what you know or have learned or indeed if they learn too that you are in The LifeStyle, you easily share what you're writing. All of it. And they applaud you. They may even ask to go with you to clubs to learn first hand what occurs. Who knows? They may join in the fun themselves.
To those who might be opposed to your newfound adventures in writing or in real life (your mother? your sister? your cousin who is a minister?), you may want to refrain from sharing information and causing yourself an enormous amount of heartache and trouble. To share with your husband/partner/lover what you know and how you think it might be an enjoyable addition to your own intimate relationship might be the best thing you've ever done. Discretion is the better part of valor.
And for those who ask you why you would ever want to write explicitly about sex, I have only one reply. I believe good sexual intimacy, whatever that means for you, is the foundation of any gratifying relationship. The closer you can get, the more honest you are, in spirit and in body, the freer you are and the happier you can become. With your one life, shouldn't you live it well?