Friday some
The annual Bad Sex Award has been made; I wonder if the contenders had read this How to write good sex scenes and taken it as a how-to manual. This, Rude awakening: three essential rules for writing good sex, appears more seriously intended, but I'm fairly sure that the Six and Sixty Ways applies to sex-writing as to other genres.
Okay, I can see that there is a case to be made (even if Peter Bradshaw makes it), that the BSA is 'a display of smug, spiteful bullying'. But I'm not sure that anything is gained by demanding that The bad sex judges should say what explicit sex is good, and thereby risk revealing something about their own private lives.
Because I remember when I posted about reading Laura Antoniou's cult work The Marketplace, I, and several other commentators said that we enjoyed it even though Not Our Personal Kink, because of the writing. Suspect that may apply to the whole subject. Because there is a difference between 'well-written' and 'what rings my particular bell'.
And on a sort of related topic, found this interesting on the pressures on writers to write the same thing and not take risks once they become successful, A Novel Kind of Conformity. Which make me think of certain writers who started out as interesting and quirky and niche and got persuaded into writing a 'breakout' book that is same old.
Thought I had a tab open with some piece about the false dichotomy of litfic/genrefic but apparently not.
And in Dept of Not-Gone, but somewhat forgotten, diseases: Scurvy Is a Serious Public Health Problem. This strikes me as an instance when the cry 'is there a doctor in the house?' really needs someone with a PhD in medical history to stand up. This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2372640.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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