Two Aces Talking Smut

You know it's True Love when your partner listens to you ramble about your writing woes without ever once begging you to shut up.

You know the feeling. When you know the have mnimal interest in the subject, but they listen because it's you talking, and you're so passionate that it's weirdly adorable. Also, it's important to you, so they try to pay attention.

Honestly, we make quite the pair. One religious, one Agnostic at best. One AroAce, one Panromantic Ace. One who writes more than they read, and one who reads more than they write.

So, when I'm venting about the difficulties of trying to write smutty romance with zero practical experience and a deep-set annoyance that writing sex literally puts me to sleep as I'm typing, the most my Beloved can really do is make sympathetic noises and laugh at me.

I don't regret that I never allowed any of the few dates who expressed interest in teenage/early-20s me pressure me into doing things I didn't want to do before I worked out I was Ace. It just means that it's really hard to write a decent sex scene without plot or feelings intruding and detracting from the sexy times.

Some years ago, after someone on the internet said that I only hated the Fifty Shades Trilogy because I was jealous, I wrote a short and spicy novelette based on BDSM. This involved calling some friends whom I knew were practitioners, and spending a Saturday afternoon doing a very odd Q&A.

Tina still bursts into giggles whenever she remembers me sitting on her couch, pen and notebook in-hand, going scene-by-scene for whether my writing fit "Safe, Sane and Consentual". Or the boudaries of what is physically possible without being an Olympic-level gymnast.

What are friends (and partners) for?