No, not science classes. Sex. ;-D More specifically, writing sex. I was thinking today about a conversation that beelzezuk and I had a few years ago about story prep. She was talking about how she had a shoe box or something that was a similar size to an 80s enormous videocamera and she played with it to see if the angles she wanted to capture with that kind of camera in Life Through a Lens were going to be realistic or not. I think it was one of our first moments of commiseration because I do exactly the same kind of thing. Maybe I can't always go and actually do the exact thing that I'm writing about, but I can physics-check when and where necessary. Examples: checking the height of the glass surface of an industrial photocopier against my body and adding the few extra inches of height to figure out where it would be for the protagonist; bending over my fairly low sofa with a pair of socks in my jeans to make sure certain manoeuvres would be possible without crushing the goods (hee). It's part of a larger pattern of obsessive attention to detail that I have. Scenes tend to play out like little movies in my head and they have to feel believable to me. Yes, they can venture into the outlandish - let's face it, the kind of sex that tends to make it into stories isn't exactly garden-variety - but it still has to be real. If two people are screwing on a blanket on the beach and they roll over once, fine, but if they roll over again in the same direction, someone's going to end up bare-assed in the sand and suddenly it won't be so fun anymore. If there are more than two people screwing, not every available tab and slot needs to be involved at any given time. This is not a Lego sculpture we're talking about here. And angles - better add math(s) to that list, or at least geometry, because even very bendy people just don't bend some ways!

I know that this attention to detail is one of the things that characterises my particular writing style - it's part of my 'voice,' and I'm happy for it to be so. Though it does mean that I spend hours and hours imagining different versions of things to see what will a) work, b) work *well*, and c) that the characters involved will like/allow/play along with and actually do. Sometimes, this is a lot of fun. *g*


ETA: Speaking of sex, lol, if anyone's planning on going to the Exotic Erotic Ball in San Francisco next year (Sat., Oct. 24th), I never did take myself off the e-newsletter list and I have an email that will get you tickets for $30. If you think there's a probability that you'll go, that is less than half price, so if you want me to forward said email, let me know! (PM/email me if you don't wanna announce it. ;) )