[Author's note: do I have enough sex?]

Of course not, I’m single.

(Ba dum ching) Seriously: I have been wondering almost since I started posting whether I have enough explicit sex in my online writing.

A little background:

Like everyone whose sweet bird of youth, shall we say, has flown (age 48 as of this past March), I am culturally a product of a previous time – a time when there was no Internet and the only option for wide dissemination of writing was the publishing industry.

I sold my first novel in 1989. Then, as I recall, there was an understanding between writers and publishers that, since sff was aimed at a young demographic – “in at 13, out at 20” was one rule of thumb I heard cited – sex should be presented implicitly, or off-stage, or one-kiss-and-fade-to-black. This was defined as “tasteful.”

I was also drawing on writers who were products of an even earlier time as literary influences. Back in the 50s and 60s, explicit sex scenes were to be found only in works labeled trashy. Any author who wanted to be taken seriously kept strictly to the one-kiss-and-fade-to-black approach, and/or deft innuendoes. As a teen writer, I acclimatized myself – thoroughly, as teen writers do – to a milieu in which you just didn’t go into the nitty-gritty.

Fast forward to today, and a way of sharing writing that is free of the constraints of corporate gatekeepers. In sff on the Internet, frequent graphic sex scenes seem to be the norm, especially in the most successful works. I’ve begun to wonder whether they have become a requirement – something that, if it’s lacking, will leave readers feeling cheated out of an integral part of the story, given that sex is an integral part of life. (This thought was triggered in part by a comment by V on MeiLin Miranda’s forum, here.)

For me, actually, there’s also a plausibility factor. My narrator I’ve presented as far from a prude; Yeolis aren’t terribly uptight about sex as a rule and neither Chevenga or most of his sex partners (with the exception of Arkans) have any cultural reason to be tacit. If anything, the way I handled it in the dead-tree versions was implausible.

It’s not as if I’ve never written any thoroughly steamy, and even kinky, Chevenga scenes. When it comes to the question of top or bottom, he has a definite preference (I’ll let you guess) and I’ve addressed that in quite some detail. It’s just that I’ve always kept such passages buried deeply behind the Portals of Propriety of my hard drive. Old habits die hard; there’s part of me that’s just plain shy about sharing it.

So I’m considering forcing myself to overcome that shyness and writing out in full at least every sex scene that is significant to the plot. I’m planning to do one such scene in the very near future in The Philosopher in Arms, with major help from Shirley. But I am interested in your thoughts – at least a vote in the poll, but preferably a comment.

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