Quarantine Project Day 21
Sex. On a Monday morning when you are writing your novel and minding your own business. Filth, as Mary Whitehouse used to say. Filth from nowhere.
Of course at my age the only filth you get is when you write about it but I certainly don't look for opportunities to introduce filth into my novels. Filth just finds its way in, and often when you're not expecting it.
If you want to be put off filth for life (and I'm talking about writing about it here, please, come along, do stay with it) you need look no further than literary writers. Booker prize winners and the like. How to write about sex is a vexed question, but there are plenty of examples of how not to do it. I mean, I challenge you to read the following without biting the pillow:
John Banville, master of lyrical bathos: "he senses all the gravid tremulousness of her breasts" and "there is no mistaking that tang of fish-slime and sawdust - for he has no doubt that this is the mouth of a busy working girl"
Amos Oz: Arch-deacon of the strained metaphor: "he starts to steer her enjoyment like a ship towards its home port, to the deepest anchorage, right to the core of her pleasure."
Really, if our "best" authors are this bad, it makes a good case for welcoming the Taliban to a seat on the Arts Council.
Filth count today was 1989 words.
(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")
