Writing About You-Know-What

Kissing. I mean writing about kissing.

Here's the problem for every self-respecting writer trying to craft a decent love scene: the English language, as glorious as it is, has very few words for "kiss." Or to be specific, very few words that I'm willing to or interested in using in place of the word "kiss." It's a serious problem. What is out there, really, other than that four letter word that begins with "k?"I have searched on-line and in my old hardback thesaurus and have come up with nothing satisfactory. The choices are dreadful.

For example, I refuse to even consider the word "osculate." It sounds more like something a doctor would do in a yearly physical. It's clinical. Cold. Sterile. It calls up images of metal examining tables and paper gowns. Not the warmth of a candle-lit room with Barry White singing in the background. Even a doctor in the throes of a passionate embrace with the woman he's proposing to doesn't osculate. (Don't ask how I know. Let's just say I've been there and done that.)

No, the only way "osculate" would get into something I was writing would be if I were to describe two people bringing into contact the flesh covering their orbicular oris muscles. Then it might work. But I'm not aware of a great demand for that type of anatomically descriptive love scenes.

"Neck," which Mr. Gates's prompt tells me is a synonym, gives me a different image--a warm summer night, a car and the gearshift getting in the way. Or, if one is writing for a younger audience, with the whole vampire thing that's going around, it calls up images of fangs and blood. Neither is what I write.

"Canoodle" is what celebrities do in the back booth of a restaurant in Beverly Hills so they can get caught by some reporter and make it on the entertainment shows on TV. "Peck" is what one does on the cheek of a friend to greet her. "Smooch" is loud and rude. "Smack" has too many other meanings, none of them good.

And "buss?" This is truly the worst of the lot--well, after "osculate." How in the world did a word that sounds like public transportation become synonymous with something emotional, passionate, loving, sweet, tender, sexy? I mean, "he bussed her." Really? Was she part of a school desegregation program? Run over by a Greyhound vehicle? Ridden out of town on a Trailways?

Janet Evanovich is supposed to have switched from romance writing to mysteries because she ran out of ways to describe the love scenes. I'm beginning to have some idea of what she meant and I'm just on the kissing. Maybe I'll use my translation program to find out what the word is in other languages. I bet the French have a ton of words for "kiss." I mean, they're French, after all.

Do you suppose they call it French kissing?

Writing Romance

As I said last week, romance novels weren't what I thought I'd write. But now that I've settled on this genre, I'm loving it. I get to hang out on-line with a lot of other terrific writers who share my interest. I will have my first novel published in June (I've mentioned that before, have I? Sorry.) I get to download a ton of cool stuff onto my iPad and count as research reading which would, under other circumstances, be my entertainment.

In the hundred or so novels I have on my magic machine I have found a wide range of books. Some of them are so-so, many of them fun and funny, all of them have something to teach me as I hone my skills.
But none of them prepared me for the reactions people have when I tell them what I'm writing.

The folks who look oddly at me and ask "Why would you want to write that?" are easy to deal with. I just tell them I'm following the first rule of writing--write what you know. That usually shuts them up. It also makes them look speculatively at my husband.

The next group is easier. They're the women who would never, even if water-boarded, confess to most people that they read romance novels. They're usually lawyers or accountants or something like that, women with serious day jobs who escape into the fiction of romance. They get it. I love talking to them about what I'm writing.

But perhaps the most fun I've had is discussing my romance writing with other writers. I've been involved in critique groups both formal and informal for more than 15 years. I've had long and detailed discussions about point of view, scene vs. summary, the beats in dialogue, how to describe a room without sounding like Architectural Digest. Only since I've been writing romance, however, have my conversations with other writers been funny.

There was the writer who read one of my first drafts of my first novel. She made the usual comments about the arc of the story and the development of the characters. But then she went off in another direction. "One thing, that scene in her hotel room. Have you been kissing my husband?"

I said no, other than the peck on the cheek when we'd come into their house, I had not. Was that what she meant? No," she said. "I mean KISSED my husband. The way you describe your character kissing is exactly like the way (my husband) kisses. I didn't think anyone else kissed like that."

"Well," I said. "Aren't you lucky?"

Then there was the writer/friend who had proofed a novel about to head off to my Crimson Romance editor. She was happy with most of it except for one question. "That thing you said he does with his tongue. I thought they did that with their teeth. But I'm not sure. I don't think I was really paying much attention when it happened to me."

I was at a loss for words.

Best, maybe, was a recent lunch with a friend who is a writer, a romance fan and a PR whiz. She works for a construction company. After I regaled her with my stories of writing, she said, "I've been working all day on the most boring writing imaginable--an application to renew our permits to put up steel structures. All I can say is, after this lunch, steel erection will have a whole different meaning."

Always glad to be of assistance to my friends.