My Love/Hate Relationship with the Sex Scene

I have a love/hate relationship with the art of writing sex. Yes, you read that right, writing sex is an art form. Just as much as the beauty of a painting or sculpture. Sex in all its facets can range from downright eye-twitching nasty to tear-inducing sweet.

Writing a sex scene is intricate; you create beautiful mental pictures that on one end cause hearts to beat quick bass drum rhythms in your reader’s chest or on the other elicits a quivering sigh of need. You write these word plays containing deep emotion and hot action. The final product in some cases is awe-inspiring, panty wetting or cock hardening bliss.

When I sit down to write anything can happen. It’s a crapshoot with loaded dice. I flesh out the story with relationships from the meet, the first, second or tenth sex scene to the HEA or HFN ending. Although, before you can write every writer’s favorite two words the end, you must complete the gauntlet of the sex.

Type of sex scene, impassioned, can’t wait to fuck or slow, sweaty breathless, and sometimes a hybrid that rides the fence. Often times they come to me without thought, my fingers flying over keys with superhuman speed and other times, it’s a 110 mph head on crash into a brick wall. The latter I hate.

Those scenes of horny skin-slapping fun takes days, weeks, hell, some stories find their bitter end in the Terminal WIP Unit. It’s a nail biting Writer Hell. Writing some stories you find that your characters are quite happy with the implied sex, but others they scream for it, would wither away from exhaustion, malnutrition and exhaustion for Olympic sex.

What can I say? Most humans see sexuality as the best thing since sliced bread (I always hated that say, WTF does it mean? I digress.) it can be more than tab A into Slot B or the rubbing of slots and tabs. Dammit, you get the idea. There are so many different ways to express sexual intimacy and not all intimacy has to do with the actual act.

I’ve written foreplay or flirting scenes that I found a helluva lot hotter than a hot bang for the buck. Unfortunately, as years of advertising have proven sex sells and the sex scene is sometimes a necessary evil.

Why am I writing this little diatribe that you probably became bored with three paragraphs earlier? Because I was bored and now you have joined me in my madness. I think about sex in some form a thousand times a day. (Don’t judge me, I ain’t the only one.) New characters, old characters, mind-fucking positions of boneless ecstasy pop into my head at weird moments. During meetings at the Day Gig, making dinner or menial tasks of folding laundry.

We’re human we think about sex and the lucky ones among us write it for our reader’s enjoyment. However, why does sex or the art of writing it have to be so hard (I heard that snicker!) to do?

It’s putting fantasy to paper or screen. In the beginning of my journey into the realm of writing, I had not thought of being a writer of sex. Years later here I am a writer of erotica and erotic romance and I stand here before you after hitting that brick wall. Super, eye-twitching nasty to my characters awkwardly darting glances at each other.

Therefore, I am off to wait for my characters to get nasty so I can finish my WIP!