Bad sex

Well it’s that time if year again, the nominations have been announced for the annual literary “Bad Sex Awards”. Joy to lazy journalism and literary snobs alike.

I struggle for words to describe not only how infuriating the very existence of this award is, but also at the fact it’s clearly organised by a bunch of castrated lemurs.

There’s a book by the late great Iain Banks called the steep approach to Garbadale. One of the key plot threads is a relationship between two cousins over the span of a number of years. Unsurprisingly there’s a fair amount of sex in it. What’s more surprising is how good it is. Banks’ prose is simple, grounded, intimate without ever crossing the line into crude. It was masterly. To this day it’s my recommendation for any writer wondering how to do a sex scene to read Banks, and this book in particular.

The steep approach to Garbadale was nominated for the bad sex awards.

F F S!

In all honesty, Banks’ only error was probably in writing a sex scene in a reasonably well read book.

Which leads me onto the wider point. An award for bad writing is pointless, intimidating, and unjust. How are we meant to encourage young writers to go “over the top” and charge into the sexy battle, heaving breasts and clunky similies in their hands if all that awaits is a hail of self-righteous snorts?

We need a good sex award, and we need it now!

After all, what’s the alternative?

Well to quote Mr Banks again: “You could always not write about sex; but then, sex is quite an important part of life.”