It's a dirty job but it's mine

Ms R has been writing sex scenes for her novel Toxic People. She knew the job was dirty when she took it but frankly didn't realise it was going to be this dirty: it's a very difficult thing to do. Even writing about a girl performing a lap-dance Ms R found herself in her living room performing the moves to see if they worked sequentially. Given that she'd ghosted a book for a stripper you'd think it would be easy. Anyway after several hours she finally figured it out and got an unexpected workout in the bargain. Win-win: the way we like to do things at Ms R Towers.

On the whole Ms R has found it is easier to write about an orgy than to write a sex scene in a bedroom, between two people who know each other. Upon discovering this she was a tad concerned. Did this mean she was, well, a bit shallow?  Had her well spent youth jumping into bed with men who were strangely without surnames (and occasionally first names) left her with a dreadful legacy? Hardly. After all Ms R can't remember most of them, ergo they don't count. 

The fact is the more fantasy-imbued the sex is, the easier it is to write, simply because you are writing about something that many people haven't done and would like to do. Plus there's a lot more purely physical description and the dialogue tends to flow. On that note, while Ms R is told she does a nice line in filthy bedtime chat, putting the stuff on paper is much harder than whispering to your lover, "Fuck me like a cheap whore in a seedy border town" or, if you're very English, "Ooh you're so naughty playing with my thingy." There is a certain type of Brit for whom 'naughty' is the single adjective associated with sex. International readers: should you find yourself with one who gets over excited using that word and is over the age of eight I suggest you move on. Last night Ms R was reading one of the competition, a certain financial book and was amused to find the banker who wrote it did not use the word 'cock' at all. Instead he used 'manhood.'  "Suck my manhood" doesn't really work for Ms R. It just sounds like hard work. 

Ms R now finds herself in the position of wishing that she'd taken notes for the last twenty odd years or so. But then perhaps the erotic madness of those moments: the strangers, the sex in unexpected places and the sheer spontaneity of it all is what you are trying to capture. Which naturally means more intense field research. Told you it was a filthy job.