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Getting in the Mood
It?s usally a good thing to wake up in the morning and know exactly what you?re going to be writing for the day, but not today. I?m supposed to do a sex scene today. Usually it?s not a problem, but today was one of those rare days when I?m just not in the mood. A lot of people across the country have asked me how do you write those scenes. Most of the time the biggest problem with writing a sex scene for me is the fact that with real sex you have the actually sensations, the immediacy of your own bodies reactions. In a book you have only words, black and white, only words to try and convey so many amazing experiences. Words seem so inadequate for it sometimes. But on one of the rare days when I get up and sex just isn?t the first thing on my mind, then a sex scene becomes a different kind of challenge. How do you get in the mood when you aren?t? How do you capture that mind set when what you?re doing in real life is refinacing your house, or walking the dog. How do you stay in the mood when the mundane world is so busy you aren?t even thinking about your own sex life let alone a fictional character?s love life?
When I worked alone at my house, and had only one small dog, Pugsley, I had put on lingere, lit candles around the computer, and tried to treat it almost like a romantic evening with a real person. It actuallly did help. There?s something about slipping on the thigh highs and black satin and lace, with some unhealthy but kick-ass shoes, that just does it for me. I enjoy dressing up, if I have the luxary of the privacy and the time. Those days are long past. There are days when we have close to thirty people in, out, and around the house and yard. I am not parading around in even a silk robe near windows where people can see me. Nope. Besides, now I have four dogs, and one of them is tall enough to look me in the eyes. You do not want to be wearing lingere when the big puppy decides to jump up on you. We?re working on the jumping up problem, but unless you?re absolutely consistent he falls back into bad habits. He is half boxer and they just love to be right up in your face. Besides, dog claws tend to catch in lace, and snag on silk. Nope, not dog safe. I?ve also got a ten-year-old daughter. I?m not sure what message I?d be sending if I paraded around the house in silk, and lingere. Think of the therepy bills when she grew up. Also, it tends to distract Jonathon, and when he gets distracted so do I. We might get a lot of ?research? done, but that doesn?t get pages made. Besides, Darla is here every day. Some days we have Darla, Mary, Sherry, and Lauretta. It?s just rude to keep disappearing up to the bedroom. Bear in mind that Mary, though an employee, is also Jonathon?s mother. Just think of the therepy bills.
So how do you get in the mood without bringing out the silk and candles? How do you get in the mood when the day is full of some very unsexy stuff? Well, I treat it like it?s not a sex scene. I treat it like it?s stage blocking. I break it down to the mechanicals. Where are we going to have the sex? What room you choose certainly effects how it?s going to happen. For today, bathroom, bath tub to be exact. I glanced back and discovered that Merry had never had a bathtub sex scene. An oversight on my part, Anita has had at least two. So the bathtub. First I need to decide how big the bathtub is. Most modern tubs don?t even hold one short person, let along two. I think that?s why we see so many shower scenes, because the tub just won?t work. So Merry?s tub is an over-sized one. It?s fiction, it makes it so much easier to change the props or set dressing. Not the orgy size tub that Jean-Claude has, or the gigantic one that I know the Queen of Air and Darkness has, but one that could hold two or three people with a little squeezing, and depending on the size of the people invovled. Okay, so we have our place. Now doing it in a bathtub limits some things. Missionary postiotion is out. That whole drowning thing. According to the sex therepaist from Canada there?s also a problem with having full intercourse in water, something about maybe getting infections from driving water into places it?s not supposed to go. The body is wonderfully protective, and unless you intrude in it, the body keeps water out of certain places. Intercourse changes that. So now I have to decide if I do my public service announcement, or pretend I didn?t know. Or just get carried away during the heat of the moment and thing, why not. It happens. If the scene starts working well enough that I?m no longer worried about logistics I won?t fight the scene. I?ll be happy that it?s working and let it find it?s own way. In fact, it would be ideal if the sex scene became like good sex itself, you get carried away sometimes. If you think this an awful lot of planning and it seems cold-blooded and not spontaneous enough, then all I have to say is spontaniety is for children. Good sex whether on paper or in real life takes planning. Especially if you want the sex to be good year after year, book after book. You got to put some thought into it.
Thought about who your character will be having sex with. Yes, the mechanics of love making are the same, but there are variations, and love making is like everything else it speaks to the personality, the intelligence, the creativity, of the people invovled. We?re doing Galen, and he is gentler energy than many of the men that Merry has in her life. So many people treat their character?s sex lives as if you always want the same intensity, same kind of sex. Not true, not for the most of the people I know. It would be like saying you always want to eat the same meal in exactly the same way every time. Sometimes a little gentle love making is exactly what the doctor ordered. One of the reasons that so many of the first times with the men has been rough, or lacked more foreplay sometimes, is, well, after a thousand years of celebacy I?m just not sure slow and gentle would be the way they?d want to go, or even be able to go. I went on the idea that the need would be so intense that it would have to be satisfied at least once before you could move away from that almost harsh need. Galen, as in so much else, is the exception. So, we have our man, and his personality. Now, in real life some very gentle people are not always the most gentle in the bedroom. Sometimes you get that reversal, but generally love making is an outgrowth of character. So, gentle. Gentle and poignant. We?ll also be including at least one other of the men. I haven?t decided who, yet. So many to choose from. But someone that compliments Galen?s personality. I?m not sure that any of the new men qualify. I just don?t know them that well yet.
So, I?ve got my physical location. My staging. By putting it in the bathroom, you know some of the props available, and some that are not. No nice roomy bed, no sheets. You get water, smaller spaces to use, so mostly none standard positions. You have soap, but you have to be careful on the soap, someo of it is simply not meant for internal use. Lubricant and soap are not always interchangeable. I know that we?re going to include a second man, and most of the men are on the tall side, so I think only two in the tub at the same time. Hmm. Okay. I think I?m ready to go make pages now.
This blog was written over a two to three day period. By day I finished the mood was better, and so was my mind set. I realize now that it wasn?t the sex that was making this one hard, but the emotional content. This next sentence is a spoiler, so if you don?t want it spoiled, stop reading now. You ready? You?ve been warned. Okay, spoiler coming. Galen almost died. Very near thing. Merry thought she?d lost him. Lost him for politics, and she?s beginning to realize what we all know, if we are thinking human beings. We may hold a political ideal, or a religious belief, or something we truly believe in, we truly believe it is worth going to war over, or defending with violence, but when we hold those we love in our arms; our children, our husbands, our wives, our fathers, our mothers. Nothing and no one seems worth loosing so much as a lock of hair from their heads, let alone their lives. Nothing is worth that, not really, not if you believe that it will cost that much. You may still pay the price. You may still run the risk. But in your heart, in the place where you live deep inside yourself, you know that the hand you hold, the body that falls asleep in your arms, is worth more than that. That letting them die for a cause, or a belief, or anything, is wrong. It is why it is so hard to win a war that has the people on the ground defending their homes and families. It doesn?t matter who is right, or who is wrong. People fight harder when their families are at stake, whether by the accident of a bomb hitting civillians, or by design. An invading force that does not truly feel that they are defending home, hearth, and family, is simply not going to fight as hard. We?re not wired to fight as hard for anything but the people we love. That we are hardwired to defend, to do anything to save. Merry is going to make love to Galen for the first time since she nearly lost him. And she has the knowledge now, not in the abstract, but in the blood he spilled, and that they are washing off of their bodies, that he almost died. That her bid for the throne almost cost him, his life, almost lost her, Galen. Powerful scene. Hard scene. Hard to pull off, and hard to write.