Throbbing Member Since 1976

I tried to write a romance novel in my youth. It grew like a beast from a simple story of sex and revenge to a complicated mish-mash of poorly researched historical references and dry prosody. It is said, “Write what you know”, and I know very little about the plight of the young, female, half-blooded Native American from somewhere in the 18th century southern colonies, and next to nothing about rebellious, progressive, New World aristocracy (except for what I’ve read in romance novels – that’s history, right?). I don’t know much about revenge either, having lived my life trying to avoid negative confrontation.

I do know a lot about sex, at least enough to write about it. But how does one write explicit scenes (de rigeur in the genre – can’t avoid ‘em) without sounding truly idiotic and/or crude? Are there any synonyms for ‘penis’ that are not either ridorkulous or downright nasty? Merriam-Webster Online Thesaurus does not even have an entry for the word, so other sources must be found.

Firstly, ‘penis’ is right out. Too clinical. In the world of Romance, terms must be both poetic and descriptive without being too crass. Common monikers include ‘member’, ‘manhood’, ‘pestle’ (my personal favorite) and ‘rod’. These can, of course, be combined with a host of adjectives to properly describe the hero’s…stuff, vis-à-vis ‘throbbing member’, ‘steely manhood’, etc. You get the point. But to my mind, these are just watered down, wussy versions of what I really call it, and I very much doubt that this is a unique opinion.

And then, once you decide what to call the damned things, you have to figure out how to describe their use. I really ran into trouble at this point, because I like to describe experiences realistically. I don’t know about you, but never in my life have I been in the middle of a little somethin’-somethin’ and thought “His hot steely pleasure pole parts my pliant petals like a hungry bee searching for nectar”. How do women write this stuff without cracking up? I certainly couldn’t, and eventually gave up.

It’s a shame, really. Such a huge market, and no way to take it seriously. Think of what could have been.