Let's talk about sex ...
What happened to Doctor Ruth? Where do these people appear from - and more to the point where do they go after they've advised nations about their sexual peccadilloes? Are they retired to some mountain commune and let out to pasture? Unless I've not been watching enough TV lately there isn't a Dr Ruth at the moment - plenty of sadistic Sloanes forcing women to strip off and wear strange fashions but no one to help with the day to day affairs of the heart. Maybe you were the same - like a lot of teenagers I learnt pretty much everything from changing room gossip and books. This, dear writers, is where we come in.
What wouldn’t you write? There are subjects I won’t read let alone write. I feel really strongly about these things, and the hard writer part of me thinks perhaps because I hate them so much the work would be powerful – but I don’t want to go there. There’s enough darkness in real life without echoing it in fiction. What do you think? It’s often been said in the heart of every writer there is a splinter of ice (and indeed Chekhov said that every true writer has to have a heart of ice). Sorry Chekhov, on this cold night why don’t you pull a chair up to the fire - I’d rather talk about warming things up a little.
If you write about people, relationships, romance it is a fair bet sex will come up sooner or later, and for the new writer it can be some of the hardest stuff to write. For years I was inhibited by the thought of my 92 year old grandmother reading the love scenes (though she has three children, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, so people do actually do ‘it’ …) Please don’t even get me started on the thought of my parents reading ‘The Book’ – they’ve had the prologue and synopsis but no more. Once it is in print it’s beyond my control. Not everyone has this reserve - a writer friend enterprisingly has gone the Anais Nin and Henry Miller route while waiting for her first novel to be picked up – she writes erotica for a literary British sex magazine. When the first edit of The Book came back, I was surprised that in chapter one the editor blocked off a space and said ‘passionate love scene here’. I always thought you should save a little for later, but these days it seems readers like you to cut to the chase. As margin notes go it is a lot more fun than ‘check spelling’.
Every year, there is a book or film that apparently raises the stakes – lately it was ‘Lust, Caution’. What books do you remember reading wide-eyed – I recall Erica Jong, Danielle Steel, Jackie Collins – all the doorstop 80’s bonkbusters being passed round the girl’s school at breaktime. Consider ‘Eqqus’ or ‘Lolita’ – shocking subject matter handled in a thought provoking intellectual way – does that make it wrong or right? After all they are reflecting life. There’s nothing like whacking censorship on a work of art to guarantee good sales – think of ‘Lady Chatterly’s Lover’, or ‘Dream Story’ by Schnitzler which went on to become Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’. You’ll notice I used the original video of ‘Baby did a bad bad thing …’ rather than the film segment. Was it just me, or was that … disturbing? I loved the book – but Tom Cruise …
Anyhoo - sex sells – cliché but true. That’s why Playboy has its bunnies, car shows have nubile women festooned over bonnets, and we all bought Diet Coke with the vague hope some hot window cleaner would get shirtless for elevenses. In writing terms it is hard to do it well – there are so many golden raspberries handed out for cringe-inducing sex scenes it’s untrue. Writing good love scenes comes back to my theory about ‘method writing’ – keep it real, start with what you know, what you like, what made you fall in love and in lust with the significant others in your life. Twenty years in to a monogamous relationship the powers of memory and imagination are vital to recall those heady early days when you are writing about characters falling in love … Dot, dot, dot. Funnily enough the pilot brought home Mamma Mia for me from Sri Lanka – the subtitles were in Norwegian, or possibly Swedish and every time they alluded to sex ‘dot dot dot’ was translated as ‘prik prik prik’.
The Ideal Man? Fig 2
The Ideal Man? Fig 3
Which goes to show even the Gods of Love among us have their off days (and we thought Borat went there first). What would the votes be for the ideal woman - Bardot? Deneuve? Johannsen? The Ideal choice is yours to keep in mind when writing, but in my book Sean can do no wrong (he might even let you borrow the boots). Above all, you have to be a little in love and in lust with your characters for it to work – if they don’t make you feel glad to see your other half after a long day writing, it’s a fair bet no one else will be feeling the love.
I’ve often wondered if the reason a lot of relationships fail is because we hang our ‘ideal’ on a person we are attracted to. Anais Nin said 'We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are'. As long as their reality doesn’t stray too far from what we want to see, everything is ok. It’s when the disjuncture becomes too strong that people drift apart. In writing, you have the chance to create your ideal man or woman (have fun) – like Cameron’s photo of Iago (Fig 2 - the perfect man? Or a sailor she found beautiful? He brought the looks, she gave us the romance). Love, lust is difficult and complicated – like most people I’ve seen friends and family endure the heartbreak of divorce and loss. Chastity is not difficult for girls studying art history as most of the guys at college were … not interested, and I’ve seen a lot of friends struggle back in the real world in later relationships where characters have formed hard and compromise is vital. Maybe it is easier to fall in love when you are young and can still grow together. Maybe this is one area where we can really engage our readers – love, lust, loss, longing … who hasn’t been there, and who won’t empathise with your characters as they go through this.
TODAY’S PROMPT: ‘You’re dirty and sweet .. oh yeah. Get it on. Bang a gong. Get it on.’ The only person I know who has a gong is my grandmother. She wouldn't allow my parents alone in the same room together until they were married (and my other grandmother would stand in front of the TV if anyone started kissing). 'Cloaks full of eagles', ‘you’re built like a car’ – are these words to melt a woman’s resolve? And yet, Mr Bolan is certainly attractive. Is it the surprising things about people that make us fall in love and get beyond simple lust? What are the great moments in literature and film you have loved where the characters finally get together and get it on? What’s your comfort level? Sizzling chastity as in Black Narcissus or ‘did they really?’ lust as in Wild Orchid, Last Tango in Paris? Do you feel too much is shown in films (Brokeback Mountain, Audition etc)? Is less more – crashing waves, steam trains racing into tunnels, chaste fadeouts ‘from here to eternity’?
