Mea culpa. On Monday I proudly announced that Tuesdays would be book review days here at WfW, and then promptly let the day sing by with no postings. I feel bad about it… how about a little make-up sex?

Settle down. I’m referring of course to Elizabeth Benedict’s entertaining and thought-provoking manual The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers.

Mundane, glorious, twisted, guilt-inspiring, and blessed; it’s astonishing that something as universal and commonplace as sex still captures our attention. With all cultural baggage we load sex down with, it’s no wonder it’s such a tough subject to approach as a writer. And here comes Elizabeth Benedict, peddling a book so refreshingly open and honest in its discussion of sex and the writing of it that no writer should pass it by. From the introduction, here is how the author describes it:

The Joy of Writing Sex is not a primer for writing pornography and not a collection of tips for writing hot sex scenes, encounters to excite you and/or your readers on lonely winter nights. This book aims to help you write well about sex—whether the sex is great, obligatory, or unwelcome, whether it fizzles, makes you laugh or makes you weep—in fiction that is about something other than the mechanics of sex.

The backbone of the book is the interviews she conducted with highly respected authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, Dorothy Allison, and Russel Banks (among others). Throughout the book she uses passages from their novels to elegantly illustrate her points. The examples are such satisfying reading, it would almost be worth the cover price for the quoted bits alone.

The book’s genius lies in finding the conflict in every type of encounter. As if to sound an obligatory note of caution, she opens with a somber look at sex in the age of AIDS, even before the chapter on the loss of virginity. First-time sex comes next, with its freight of expectation and mixed emotion. You would think that sex between married couples would provide the least fodder for stories, simply by virtue of being so socially acceptable. Yet even in the marital bed, she finds angles on the act that could be used to create tension and deepen characters.

Turning the tables, she moves from wedded bliss to the universal appeal of writing about extramarital affairs. Three Cheers for Adultery begins with this:

If adultery did not exist, writers would have had to invent it.

So true. And as she points out, it’s not just the act itself that propels stories of adultery, but all the trappings of secrecy, the thrill of the forbidden, the utter impermanence of the situation.

Then she pushes further into dark territory with a look at sex forbidden by law, history, and politics. Cold war spies from opposite sides, couples with enormous age differences, all the way down the ladder of forbidden to incest, she lays bare the struggles of those drawn to another they simply can’t have, but do anyway. It’s uncomfortable reading in places, which is precisely the point.

The book closes with a look at what is ironically the most unmentionable of all; solo sex. This is the one type of “encounter” that lies outside of all the rest in that it’s not about a relationship between two people, and thus presents some unique storytelling challenges. She dispenses her customary enlightened advice, and illustrates it with another set of note-perfect examples.

We all think about sex and we all read about it. Surprisingly, this seems to be the only book on writing about it, at least the only one I’ve found. Fortunately, it’s not only chock full of great advice, but that advice is delivered with a steady hand an subtle wit. If you write about human relations, you write about sex. If you write about sex, then you need this book on your shelf.