Why write about sex? More to the point, what’s the
problem with writing about sex? Most people, whether they’re reading this or
not, are in the world because their parents had sex. Even the few who were
conceived in a test tube were probably conceived in the test tube because their
parents had tried to conceive a baby by having sex, and hadn’t succeeded. Their
parents were probably having sex because they liked it. In fact, a lot of
people like sex so much that they go to considerable lengths to make sure they
can do it without conceiving a child.
Unless you’re very unlucky, sex comes closer to our
lives than murder, zombies, vampires, or cataclysms that threaten the future of
civilisation, but you don’t hear the moralisers complaining about any of those.
Along with everyone else, the moralisers might well complain if I went out and
murdered someone, but if I wrote about it, that would be fine. Not so with sex.
Provided it’s all done in secret, and according to a set of rules that seem
rather arbitrary, the moralisers seem happy enough, but if you write about it,
you might as well be offering them a slice of cold baby pie. Curiously, though,
vampire stories seem to be able to sneak past the censors, in spite of their
very obvious erotic overtones.
If you write erotica, you’re probably going to be
writing about sex. It’s possible that there are people who just want to read
descriptions of sex, but that seems about as much fun as reading a description
of a zombie, or a vampire, or a murder. To my mind, the sex should be integral
to the story, like the murder in a murder mystery, in such a way that the story
wouldn’t work without it.
However, sex in fiction isn’t necessarily restricted
to erotica. There are murders in stories that aren’t murder mysteries, though
if it’s a murder mystery, there does have to be a murder. Similarly, if it’s a
zombie story, there are probably going to be zombies, and in a realistic
contemporary love story, there’s probably going to be some sex. It’s what
people do. If you’re in a relationship, I expect there’s a better than even
chance that sex is (or was) involved somewhere.
You don’t have to want to read about sex (or zombies),
but if people do want to read about sex (or zombies), leave them alone. For
them to read about it, someone has to write about it. Good luck to the people
who write zombie fiction, I’ll stick with writing erotica. I’m obviously crazy,
but I prefer sex to being killed by a zombie. I also have an idea for a vampire
story that the moralisers might disapprove of. That’s fine. They don’t have to
read it.
