Wednesday, September 06, 2006

The First Kiss...

My characters have finally shared their first kiss and I'm at 20,000 words! Woo Hoo! So it's party time.

And I thought we'd party over a first kiss discussion.

My sister is 12 years older than me and I remember a discussion we had when she was considering dating her now hubby. They had gone out and he had moved in for a kiss and she'd backed off. She told him, "A kiss will change everything." And this was long before the days when Julia Roberts was trying to prevent herself from smooching Richard Gere. He wrote a song about it and recorded it for her and that song helped settle his place in her heart.

I remember my first kiss. Although it wasn't truly memorable. I was young and my best friend was a little boy named Timmy. We were really best buddies. I was a bit of a tomboy back then. We played fort, dared each other to jump out of trees and off various pieces of play ground equipment and when we caught my then teenage sister kissing her boyfriend, we decided to do that too. It took us a grand total of maybe two nano-seconds to decide it wasn't for us. He had cooties and I didn't want them.

It was many years later, when I finally understood that not ALL boys had cooties and decided to give this whole kissing thing another whirl. It lasted slightly longer than the first, and thankfully, he didn't slobber on me or anything. As far as first kisses go, it wasn't bad. He was my childhood crush of the moment (I had several) and it was definitely a happy moment for me.

My hubby and I took forever to have our first kiss. We were really good friends for four years before deciding to date. And we were both so nervous about totally blowing our friendship that we decided to take things very slow. We were juniors in high school and we dated for over a month and a half before we had our first kiss. And FINALLY I had found the right one. The rest as they say is history.

When I'm writing a first kiss, I always think back to the first kiss hubby and I shared. It was on the front porch of my childhood home and it was Christmas time. So we were standing there, freezing, surrounded by the glow of Christmas lights and hugging, when it happened. It's a really wonderful moment to reflect on while writing.

While I haven't written a similar scene for any of my heroes or heroines, I like to reflect on the emotions I felt then. It's a lot better than that first kiss with poor Timmy. It must have been hard to kiss a girl who could beat you up.

What about you? What was your first kiss like? Do you ever think about it as you write?

April

5 comments:

Karen Erickson said...

My actual first kiss? I was assaulted in the hallway while I skipped to my classroom. Yep, we were six and his name was Kenny and he hopped out of no where and planted one right on me. I continued skipping, wiping my mouth. LOL

Needless to say I don't think of that kiss when I write first kiss scenes. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

I'm going to admit something -- when I'm kissing my hubby, I'll really pay attention. Like analyze the whole thing. Then tuck it into my brain and use it for later. He'd die if he knew this...

Julie S said...

Oh man...way to dredge up some...memories. LOL.

My first "kiss" was Ronald in kindergarten. We ate some paste, then snuck behind the table and smooched. My first KISS was Frank in ninth grade. It wasn't bad. But I had already started reading steamy romance novels, so high-school kissing in general was underwhelming.

But I kept at it, and finally got my romance novel kiss!

Cole Reising said...

What a neat posting April! And of course I love the photos you found! :)

Cole

MJFredrick said...

I was a REALLY late bloomer. My mom didn't want me to date till I was 16, but one of my friends wanted to take me to the rodeo when I was a freshman, and since his dad and cousin were going, she let me go. We got back to my house, and he kissed me, and I had no idea what he was doing, all that slobbery stuff. He pulled back and said, "Wow, you're not very passionate, are you?"

Blech.

First kiss with the dh was three years later, in his car in front of a high school dance. MUCH better.

Shelli Stevens said...

My first kiss was when I was 15 with a friend, who was the best friend of my brother. We were walking around after watching the stars at night, and we decided (yes we talked about it) we would kiss. So we counted to three and did it. I was reading all these Harlequins about 'bruising kisses' and 'his lips crushed down on hers' and I remember when our lips touched I thought... 'Eeew they're not hard, they're all soft and squishy." LOL.