SEX? MUST WE?

{In Whip Smart, Melissa Febos

 chronicles five years in her early twenties

when she was a dominatrix and heroin user.

But the book is about so much more than those details.

It’s about living a lie:

sometimes many lies at once.

It’s about lying to yourself.

And it’s about discovering truths about yourself in places you never expected.}

Martin Amis says literary sex is impossible, Hilary Mantel prefers to leave things to the imagination.

MARTIN AMIS:

"Sex is irreducibly personal, therefore not universal.

It's not that surprising. Of all human activities this is the one that peoples the world. With that tonnage of emotion on it, if there is going to be one thing you can't write about then that would be it.

It's a bit like why it's so difficult to write about dreams."


TONI BENTLEY:

"It is not difficult to write about sex. It is impossible.

Like its sister intimacies prayer and dance, sex is a live, three-dimensional

(well, O.K., four- or five- if your cylinders are firing)

happening, and black squiggles on a flat, dry page are, at best, a nostalgic distortion of a done deal — and usually skip the lube.

Ouch!

As I said, impossible. But being perverted, I mean perverse, I have always thought it would be a good idea to try. Besides, guaranteed failure has a thrilling upside: freedom."

 HILARY MANTEL:
{Winner of  last year's Booker for her historical tour de force Wolf Hall.}

"It's very easy to write a sex scene where everything goes wrong, you can do it in a funny way or in a way that's absolutely heartbreaking, but it's very hard to write about good sex.

"In good sex the individual personality kind of gets lost, people transcend themselves in a way.

Good sex and happiness are not a story, the story occurs when things go wrong."

JULIAN BARNES:

"Writing about sex contains an additional anxiety on top of all the usual ones: that the writer might be giving him or herself away, that readers may conclude, when you describe a sexual act, that it must already have happened to you in pretty much the manner described.”

{Author E L James has regularly refuted claims the sado-masochistic content of the novels is based on her own experience.}

Do you feel a "Commercial Obligation" or

"Reader Insistence"

 to write about sex in detail as in 5O SHADES?

BURNT OFFERINGS

is still free:

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SEX HELPS

"Sex without love is a meaningless experience,

but as far as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty damn good."

- Woody Allen

Sex does help. Just not the way we would think in our novels.

Jodi Henry once wrote an excellent post ( http://jodilhenry.blogspot.com/ )

on the subject she thought I was going to discuss : sex in literature.

A squrim-worthy topic she calls it. It is that and more because :

Sex sells.

You roll your eyes and go, "Duh!"

I mean, just look at the skyrocket sales of 50 SHADES OF GRAY and its two sequels!

Yes, sex sells ...

but not always for the reasons you might think.

Men, of course, are hard-wired to see a beautiful woman and have their hormones go into a conga line ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conga_line )

But we men are more complex than the cliches written in COSMOPILITAN.

Sex. Lust. Love.

The first two are primal instincts. The third gives birth to legend and magic.

Every writer is in much of his work. But it is not as straight-forward as that.

J.R.R. Toilken rarely, if ever, wrote love scenes. Instead, he wrote distantly of Love, the concept with which Tennyson teased but never consummated in THE IDYLLS OF THE KING.

He was a shy man, and it shows in what he chose NOT to write.

He reflected his times -- as we must reflect ours in what we write and for whom we write.

But for whom do we write? And what exactly are "our" times?

We live in a lonely age. From teenager on up, we feel outside, misunderstood, and alone -- the three labor pains that give birth to the possibility of love.

A reader is drawn to a novel by what is lacking in her/his life.

We've already touched on some of the things most people feel lacking in their lives. It can be summed up in one word : intimacy --

Sex is only the tip of that iceberg floating in the existential void of our modern times. There is much more beneath the murky surface.

How many of us feels valued, loved for who we truly are - bulges, skin blemishes, and other imperfections not withstanding?

Not many.

How many of us have such passion and fire in the night that we tingle in the morning light?

Even fewer.

Many of us settle for half-relationships, tepid gropings in the dark that leave us feeling empty, not full, the morning after.

Why is that?

In the process of love-making, we leave a bit of ourselves with the other. If we make love without feeling love, the other fails to leave a bit of themselves within us.

Inside we have become less ... not more. Do that enough times and a void is carved within us.

That is why we have become the Hollow People, seeking to fill that emptiness within with all the wrong things :

Sex without satisfaction.

Passion without permanence.

Lust wearing the mask of love.

Think of the words of John Masefield :

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

Why did I quote Masefield's poem?

We all long for that handsome, beautiful Other who will tenderly stroke our cheek,

fan the fires of our passions,

and fill our hearts and head with the laughter of two souls meant for each other.

Romance. Magic. Love.

Those are the stars a winning author steers by.

Fix them to your mast, and you will never go wrong.
***
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***

**

SEX HELPS

"Sex without love is a meaningless experience,

but as far as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty damn good."

- Woody Allen

Sex does help. Just not the way we would think in our novels.

Jodi Henry once wrote an excellent post ( http://jodilhenry.blogspot.com/ )

on the subject she thought I was going to discuss : sex in literature.

A squrim-worthy topic she calls it. It is that and more because :

Sex sells.

You roll your eyes and go, "Duh!"

Yes, sex sells ...

but not always for the reasons you might think.

Men, of course, are hard-wired to see a beautiful woman and have their hormones go into a conga line ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conga_line )

But we men are more complex than the cliches written in COSMOPILITAN.

Sex. Lust. Love.

The first two are primal instincts. The third gives birth to legend and magic.

Every writer is in much of his work. But it is not as straight-forward as that.

J.R.R. Toilken rarely, if ever, wrote love scenes. Instead, he wrote distantly of Love, the concept with which Tennyson teased but never consummated in THE IDYLLS OF THE KING.

He was a shy man, and it shows in what he chose NOT to write.

He reflected his times -- as we must reflect ours in what we write and for whom we write.

But for whom do we write? And what exactly are "our" times?

We live in a lonely age. From teenager on up, we feel outside, misunderstood, and alone -- the three labor pains that give birth to the possibility of love.

A reader is drawn to a novel by what is lacking in her/his life.

We've already touched on some of the things most people feel lacking in their lives. It can be summed up in one word : intimacy --

Sex is only the tip of that iceberg floating in the existential void of our modern times. There is much more beneath the murky surface.

How many of us feels valued, loved for who we truly are - bulges, skin blemishes, and other imperfections not withstanding?

Not many.

How many of us have such passion and fire in the night that we tingle in the morning light?

Even fewer.

Many of us settle for half-relationships, tepid gropings in the dark that leave us feeling empty, not full, the morning after.

Why is that?

In the process of love-making, we leave a bit of ourselves with the other. If we make love without feeling love, the other fails to leave a bit of themselves within us.

Inside we have become less ... not more. Do that enough times and a void is carved within us.

That is why we have become the Hollow People, seeking to fill that emptiness within with all the wrong things :

Sex without satisfaction.

Passion without permanence.

Lust wearing the mask of love.

Think of the words of John Masefield :

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

Why did I quote Masefield's poem?

We all long for that handsome, beautiful Other who will tenderly stroke our cheek,

fan the fires of our passions,

and fill our hearts and head with the laughter of two souls meant for each other.

Romance. Magic. Love.

Those are the stars a winning author steers by.

Fix them to your mast, and you will never go wrong.
***

SEX EXPLAINED!

SEX explained

We want to believe. And it causes us no end of troubles.

Many have emailed me, asking what I was doing with my SEX post.

In the last four hours of the day yesterday, I posted the one word, SEX, and two sexy photos. Nothing else. I tripled my existing number of visitors and far surpassed the highest day of the past month.

John Locke claims to know the secret of vast eBooks sales. I’m happy for him. But you don’t catch J K Rowling or Stephanie Meyers writing books on how to sell millions of books.

Why? Sometimes the lightning strikes. Sometimes it doesn’t. It rarely strikes twice in exactly the same way.

John is sure the key is to write “timeless” posts, twitter search who has spoken of your topic, then twitter them the link to your “forever relevant” post. BAM. Success is waiting to pounce upon you after that.

He wrote a post of his hero worship of Joe Paterno and his mother and followed his recipe for success. Lightning struck. The university which employs Coach Paterno chose Locke’s post as the blog of the month. Thousands of visitors poured Locke’s way. Fate’s spotlight sizzled upon him.

Locke had a backlist of books ready for the opportunity. He himself describes his books as lewd, shocking, disgusting, and deliciously bawdy. As yesterday proves, SEX sells. Amanda Hocking found out the same thing.

Can we duplicate that chance fall of the dice? Can we write something that will speak to the heart of an institution or international movie star so much that they will write of it in their blog or twitters? Lots of luck with that.

So far Stephen King hasn't written of me in his ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY articles. And I promised him a date with Olivia Wilde, too!

We all want to believe that there is a system. The casinos love those of us who cling to that delusion.

There is only the strike of lightning. Our responsibility is to have the best product we can craft should that lightning ever strike us. We can hold up the lightning rod all day, or we can continue to grow as writers. The smartest of us try to do both.
***

THREE FACES OF THE HEART

The 3 Faces of the Heart :

Sex. Friendship. Romance.

As writers we must know each face.

Each face must be glimpsed by our readers for them to want to stay in the world we write into being.

Think SEX AND THE CITY.

Yes, there was sex. There was talk about sex. Boy, was there.

There was even romance. But at the heart of its success was friendship ... and humor (which in a way is the lifeblood of friendship.)

For me the parade of spotless, unwrinkled designer clothes cast the women as mannequins. Their obsession with men devoid of any other interests made them as soulless as mannequins, too.

Still their friendship carried the show.

But were they ever friends with their lovers?

Can sex ever blossom into a relationship without friendship? Perhaps sex can grow into love, for love is a kind of obsession. And obsession is blind.

Friendships endure, not because they see less, but because they understand more.

Friendship.

Anais Nin, the enigmatic French author famous for her journals spanning 60 fascinating years, wrote :

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world dawns."

It would be hard to say whether King Solomon was made more alone by his many wives or by the prison of his throne. Nonetheless, King Solomon wrote :

"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."

Friendship.

It is what is so very lacking in today's cyber-society where everyone is twittering, but no one is listening.

Or giving a damn.

They are hunched over their blackberries, waiting impatiently for the message to end so they can jump in with, what is essentially, a "Listen to me!"

Because so few of us have it, friendship and its portrayal are what will bring us back to a novel over and over again. I know that it is the case for me. And for the friends I talk to.

Frodo and Sam. Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Spencer and Hawk (from the always entertaining Robert B. Parker series.) Bill and Ted. Calvin and Hobbes.

Family is a crap shoot. Love cools. But friendship endures.

Your novel must have magic to endure in the hearts of your readers. Not the magic of spells weaving patterns of color in the night. But the magic of friendship casting its healing light in the heart of two lovers.

Abigail and John Adams. Their years of letters shows lovers grown into friends. Spencer (from Parker's series again) and his one great love Susan Silverman is a great love of friends in literature.

If you can ignite that magic within your pages, the readers will read and re-read your book.

I'll let Mark Twain have the last word on friendship :

"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
***
I remember driving down lonely rural roads after Hurricane Rita as I delivered rare blood to the Katrina-devastated hospitals surrounding New Orleans. I also remember pushing back acid memories of the destruction by singing along with the Eagles as I wound down strange country roads :

SEX SELLS

"Sex without love is a meaningless experience,

but as far as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty damn good."

- Woody Allen

Jodi Henry wrote an excellent post ( http://jodilhenry.blogspot.com/ )

on the subject she thought I was going to discuss yesterday : sex in literature.

A squrim-worthy topic she calls it. It is that and more because :

Sex sells.

You roll your eyes and go, "Duh!"

Yes, sex sells ...

but not always for the reasons you might think.

Men, of course, are hard-wired to see a beautiful woman and have their hormones go into a conga line ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conga_line )

But we men are more complex than the cliches written in COSMOPILITAN.

Sex. Lust. Love.

The first two are primal instincts. The third gives birth to legend and magic.

Every writer is in much of his work. But it is not as straight-forward as that.

J.R.R. Toilken rarely, if ever, wrote love scenes. Instead, he wrote distantly of Love, the concept with which Tennyson teased but never consumated in THE IDYLLS OF THE KING.

He was a shy man, and it shows in what he chose NOT to write.

He reflected his times -- as we must reflect ours in what we write and for whom we write.

For whom do we write? And what exactly are "our" times?

We live in a lonely age. From teenager on up, we feel outside, misunderstood, and alone -- the three labor pains that give birth to the possibility of love.

A reader is drawn to a novel by what is lacking in her/his life.

We've already touched on some of the things most people feel lacking in their lives. It can be summed up in one word : intimacy --

sex is only the tip of that iceberg floating in the existential void of modern times. There is much more beneath the murky surface.

How many of us feels valued, loved for who we truly are - bulges, skin blemishes, and other imperfections not withstanding?

Not many.

How many of us have such passion and fire in the night that we tingle in the morning light?

Even fewer.

Many of us settle for half-relationships, tepid gropings in the darkness that leave us feeling empty, not full, the morning after.

Why is that?

In the process of love-making, we leave a bit of ourselves with the other. If we make love without feeling love, the other fails to leave a bit of themselves within us.

Inside we have become less ... not more. Do that enough times and a void is carved within us.

That is why we have become the Hollow People, seeking to fill that emptiness within with all the wrong things :

Sex without commitment.

Passion without permanence.

Lust wearing the mask of love.

Think of the words of John Masefield :

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

Why did I quote Masefield's poem?

We all long for that handsome, beautiful Other who will tenderly stroke our cheek,

fan the fires of our passions,

and fill our hearts and head with the laughter of two souls meant for each other.

Romance. Magic. Love.

Those are the stars a winning author steers by.

Fix them to your mast, and you will never go wrong.
***