My friend Erika Veurink just wrote a romance novel (!), and on Thursday I’ll be in conversation with her on stage at the Strand, if you’re free and would like to come hang out with us. My most burning question for her will be…
…what’s it really like to write a sex scene? How do you shrug off inhibitions and describe a scene in real detail? How do you draw readers in while knowing your parents are among them?
“I guess I should have thought a little harder about the inevitable writing of sex scenes before I signed up to write a romance novel,” Erika told me. “I assumed ‘the act’ happened as spontaneous combustion, like 650-ish words on a page as an outpouring of divine inspiration. But it turns out, the words have to be written.”
Here’s how she did it, in her own words:
1. Rid yourself of the notion that the scene you are about to write will be read by anyone you’ve ever met. Actually, let’s just assume this scene is destined for a dusty box under your bed, never to see the light of day. That’s a good place to start.
2. Light a candle. An expensive candle. The kind of candle that lives in a pale pink vessel you save for dinner parties and other grown-up endeavors. This is its exact use case.
3. Prepare for the inner critic, who loves nothing more than a sex scene unwritten. Sauntering into your subconscious, he’ll offer heartless reminders of your high school ex-boyfriend and general notes on your inability to perform any task in front of you. Kindly see him out.
4. Assemble some source of external courage. I opt for dark chocolate chips, but this might be the time to go full-tilt Hemingway with a finger or two of whiskey or a cute little jam jar fizzing with a crisp white.
5. Be comforted by the books you’ve assembled — like, Honey and Spice, You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty, First-Time Caller — that tower symbolically around your writing space. Other people have written sex scenes and lived to tell the tale.
6. You’ll need poetry, and lots of it. Because no one is as unapologetically horny as poets.
7. Find a playlist without words and lots of yearning (think: Sade and Prince). Play it on the softest volume possible to drown out your neighbor’s crying baby or the sound of oil simmering in the kitchen while your husband makes dinner.
8. You’ll need to write a very shitty first draft. Dive in headfirst. Don’t look up until the scene comes to a close. Reward yourself with the aforementioned treat.
9. This is the time to recall the way it felt when you heard him shout your name during a summer rainstorm on Bowery. Now’s the moment to retrace the steps of her fingertip across your knuckles under the open Vermont sky. Settle into the memory of splitting a martini on your sofa, his lips dragging across your neck, whispering “all mine.” Every moment of electric need and bodily hunger has led you to this.
10. And when it’s over, promise yourself you’ll never have to ever write another sex scene as long as you live.
Never one to shy away from a question, I also asked Erika how she figured out which words to use for body parts. “Thankfully, my editors were very much a resource,” she told me. “Early on, I was like, ‘How do you talk about penises?’ They were like, your two options are d- or c-. There’s no ‘member,’ which I appreciated.”
Thank you, Erika. And please come join us on Thursday evening, if you’re free. We’d love to see you!
P.S. Nine couples with the best on-screen chemistry, and is this the sexiest podcast?
(Photo of Erika by Christine Han, as part of her house tour.)
