I’m flabbergasted to see the news that Connie Brockway has quit writing romance because she’s tired of writing sex. Er. I think her last book, which I have on my bedside table, ran about 400 pages and maybe 20 of those included sex, so, well, color me doubly surprised. Just seems to me that there’s plenty of story there besides sex. But I can understand wanting a change, whatever the reason.
There’s a nifty discussion at Sylvia’s blog about this and writing sex. Like most erotic romance writers, I like that part. It comes easily. If it didn’t, I’d probably be writing something else. But then, I’m an action junkie and as I’ve said here before, writing sex is writing an action sequence. In a romance, it’s a huge double whammy because in addition to the action which must be perfectly choreographed there’s the roller coaster of emotion going on. They are Big Scenes, where big things happen, characterization revelations happen, turning points happen, conflict deepens.
Anyway, all this thinking about sex in romance made me realize that in at least 3 recent projects I’ve taken a long pause (as in put the project away for a lengthy time period) before writing the first sex scene, because it is the first Big Scene. It’s huge and I think maybe I’m worrying too much about getting it right the first time. Putting too much pressure on it and myself. Performance anxiety, of a sort?
I wonder what would happen if I shuffled the order and wrote the Big Scene first and then wrote towards it next time around. I think maybe I’ll try that as an experiment. If nothing else, I’d know my characters a whole lot better when I wrote the beginning, something I always seem to struggle with. I do a lot of fixes to my early scenes because I’ve learned so much more about the people and events once I get further into the book. Hmmmm…must try this.
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