Authors Electric

Antonio Banderas and Victoria Abril in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! A few weeks ago, I came across an excellent blog post by Emma Darwin on writing about sex. It’s something I’ve been pondering a good deal recently, (I know, I know) because I’m in the middle of reworking an old idea and central to it is the theme of an intensely physical and virtually irresistible sexual attraction. Emma makes the very valuable and astute point that erotica, while often deemed to be ‘literarily unrespectable’ is just like any other kind of writing and subject to the same demands, the same constraints – not of what’s depicted, but how the writer exercises his or her craft. ‘What is it about writing sex which makes both writers and readers regard it as a wholly different business from anything else?’ she asks.  If you decide to leave the bedroom door firmly closed in a novel about relationships, it always seems to me as much of a cop out as - for example - leaving out the dialogue just because you...