The Burning Pen: Sex Writers on Sex Writing, from Carol Queen’s essay.
“When I sit down to write, the creative world I access includes not just my experiences and fantasies…but also the entire social discussion about female sexuality.”
“I explore an erotic realm in which women mostly do not have the constraints of correctness and propriety, in which the “you own your own body” ideal of feminism is a done deal, and women mostly are free to do things that nice girls don’t do. For one thing, this is a crucial cultural function of erotic literature: It always serves as a kind of protest literature exploring (and exploding) taboos, gender roles, and socially imposed notions of appropriate sexuality.”
“I suppose I could be setting these explorations on another planet, but to me the erotic stories I write work best as literature when they exist in and even grapple with existing taboos. That way the tension lives within the story….”
Related Posts: Making It Good and Preliminary Thoughts on Two Types of Erotic Novels.
