Sexual Pervisity in New York

There's a danger in writing about fictional sex and romance for a living (well, an aspiring living): not just the danger that people will think the incidents you write about are biographical. That's to be expected. No, the greater danger is that people will assume sexual experiences you haven't written about are yours, too. Let me explain...

I recently became a staff writer for a startup literary magazine, Lost Writers. I'm writing in several different departments: Sex & Relationships, Travel, Reviews. My first piece, a look at aspects of my relationship with my fiance, went up last week in the S&R section, and I e-mailed several friends and family members about the article.

Unfortunately, by the time some of my more laggardly acquaintances checked out the link, the editors of Lost Writers had switched the featured content in the Stay In Bed department. Instead of my personal essay on being in an interfaith relationship at the holidays, my friends read 23 haikus about Cynthia Taylor's former sex partners.

And yet, several people (including one of my sisters) e-mailed me to say, "Love the piece. Is Cynthia Taylor your new pseudonym?"

What? Excuse me? You people, who have known me for years, thought that this piece was mine? When would I have found the time to have 23 sex partners? I've been in a monogomous relationship for the last 5 years! Do you honestly think I've dropped acid? Dated a felon? Slept with my best friend's husband?*

Either they assumed the piece was fiction...or writing romance can really wreak hell on your reputation.

*As a clarification, let me say I enjoyed Ms. Taylor's writing very much, found it funny and worthwhile. This is not meant in any way as a comment on her experiences, fictional or not. Live and let live, and all that.

Can you have too much sex?

Chapter 14 has just been put to bed...and I should follow suit. But one question floats around my mind like a miasma, infecting all my sleepy thoughts with revision-y thoughts.

Does it contain too much of what some quaintly call the sex?

I know, I know, it's a romance novel. You can't have to much sex, right? That appears to be the uneducated assumption. After all, when I told my boyfriend I was nervous about writing my first sex scene a month or so ago (after what he knew were at least six months of working on this novel) he said, "But isn't the whole thing just sex scenes? Isn't that what a romance novel is?"

Uh, no. Not quite. I just read one over the weekend (How to Marry A Marquis, for all you Julia Quinn fans) in which there wasn't any sex at all until the very last chapter. That's chapter 36 or so.

My characters were very happily fighting and flirting and doing nice things for each other and misunderstanding each others' motives throughout the first 70,000 odd words of the novel. And then they had sex and it was all well and good and created all kinds of complications and led to scenes with secondary characters and that was good too.

And now they won't stop doing it.

Which is a problem, because while I'm sure they're greatly enjoying it, I'm not so sure anyone who reads the chapter will. There's nothing so easy to write as a boring sex scene.

I guess I can always hope they get tired of each other.