56 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.
SUZANNE ROBERTS is the author
of the memoir Almost Somewhere
(Winner of the National Outdoor
Book Award), as well as four
collections of poetry. She serves as
the current El Dorado County Poet
Laureate and teaches for the low
residency MFA program in creative
writing at Sierra Nevada College.REQUIRED
5 Tips for Great Sex (Writing)
Like sex itself, writing about sex seems rife with potential pitfalls—it could be embarrassing or sound
silly (or worse) instead of sexy, and what if people judge you? As in so many areas, the best defense is
a good offense. Inspired by the essays featured in this issue, SUZANNE ROBERTS explains how
to make writing about sex as lively as the act itself.hen i was about seven, I heard the word fuck at school.
When I got home and asked my father what it meant, he said,
“It means making love.” Then he told me not to ask any more ques-
tions. Within a few days, a picture book was left out for me. Peter
Mayle’s “Where Did I Come From?” features two pudgy characters who
have sex under a colorful quilt. The man looks like a pink Pillsbury
Doughboy. I remember thinking that everything about the book
was utterly bizarre, but the unsaid rule was that I would read it and
wouldn’t ask questions. I learned that sex should be kept secret.
As an adult, I write memoir, and I’ve written and published sex-
related essays (some of them in this very magazine). My mother said
to me, about stories I’ve told, “But I never told anyone about that.”
And my answer to her was always the same: “Now you don’t have to,
because I’m telling everyone.” Hiding my sex life would mean leaving
out a large part of my lived experience.
Because talking about sex was taboo in my family, as it is in many
families, I realized early on that if I wanted to include sex scenes in
my stories, or write about sex head on, it had to be good writing, a
way to contend with my mother’s voice, the one saying, “It makes meW