Gasp! What Do You Mean My Mother Will Read That?

By Kerry Schafer 

 The topic for this week - how do you feel about your parents reading your sexy scenes - was purely theoretical when the week began. I read Jeffe's post on Sunday, comfortably contemplating the fact that since I have no books published, nobody is reading anything unless I hand it over. Since I had no intention of handing over drafts of sexy scenes to my mother, the problem was distant, classed with thoughts like "someday I'm going to die." Yep. Sooner or later. Not today. Nothing to be done about it, no need to worry. On Wednesday, things changed dramatically. I accepted representation by the fabulous Deidre Knight of the Knight Agency, and that changed my perspective dramatically. (You can read the story here, if you wish.) All at once, the idea of a published book is something within reach. I have an agent who believes in the book, and that we can get it published. This once theoretical idea of my mother reading my sex scenes is real and in my face like a hungry cat on Saturday morning. If the book is published, people will read it. Maybe (hopefully) lots of people. My mother. And all of her church friends. My own teenage children. My co-workers, potentially my clients, and maybe my old high school friends. Cue panic. Let me be clear that I am not prudish, just private. I love to read a book with good sex scenes, and writing sex is easy enough for me, but the idea that somebody, particularly my mother, is going to read it? Alarming. All I can say is, I'd better get over it. I'll warn my mom, and I honestly think she'll handle it fine. The kids? That one is a little worse. Kids don't like to know that their parents even think about sex, let alone read what they've written about it. Again, I'll warn them, and then they are on their own. Old enough to make their own decisions. I guess when it comes to writing sex scenes it's like writing anything else. Get it on the page, make sure it belongs there. What happens after that is between the words and the reader.