Can you tell this post is about sex?
This article describes perfectly the trouble we writers have describing the most intimate and messiest of moments in life -- writing erotic scenes. I also discovered there is an award for Bad Sex in Fiction Writing award. They even have a ceremony. I definitely wouldn't want it -- the ceremony or the award. I would at least be in stellar company.
I recently read an excerpt from an erotic paranormal book and cringed when I read how the heroine's "...juices dripped down his muscular thigh." Yuck! Yes, sex is messy. Yes, sex is often hilarious and awkward. And, yes, it is nearly impossible to write a good sex scene without being either too clinical or too poetic. Moths caught in lampshades and penises angrily slapping against bellies is enough to make me never want to have sex again if it just weren't for the nerve tingling, hot rush of emotions and sensory overload that goes with good sex when you lose yourself in someone else and all that exists for that moment is the thrust and undulating movements of two people in perfect sync as the world falls away and nothing matters but this moment, this feeling, this . . . this.
This is where writers falter and stumble and ultimately expend the most energy in seeking to make the sublime (or ludicrously horrid) moments transcend words in the moments when no words are needed.
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