I have a tendency to treat this blog like I used to treat essay questions in school. I want the writing to hang together well, so I agonize over how to frame things so much that I end up not writing enough (or in this case, anything).
So, since it’s been more than two months, I’m just going to write. I was telling my friend Irene the other day that my brain hasn’t been in a good place to write fiction lately because I can only write fiction when I’m happy. Well, I was hit by a plot bunny today. One of my online acquaintances said that he has a very career-oriented female friend who wants a similarly career-oriented guy, but that most of the career-oriented guys she knows are jerks. I thought about the traditional Hallmark movie where the woman goes home and meets a guy who runs a coffee shop in a small town and she discovers that there are more important things than careers in the big city. Blech.
But what if she met another big-city man who has some kind of amazing talent but lacks that killer instinct that the career-oriented men she knows have and which turns her off? Like he’s an artist or a writer or a musician or an inventor or something. And she could use her contacts to help him make it? I ended up with musician because that would work well in a movie.
So he’s a barista who works at the Starbucks on her way to work in the morning. She always gives her name as Beth because (a) she doesn’t want them misspelling her real name and (b) she doesn’t actually want to give her real name. He recognizes her when she comes in and remembers her preferences and this is actually a big turnoff for her because he’s so . . . nice.
Then she hears him singing/playing his guitar/playing his glass harmonica or whatever and she tries to get him to accept her help to make a career of it. Romance blossoms then he finds out that she’s looking for a career-oriented guy and thinks that she’s playing Pygmalion and that she doesn’t know him or even really want to get to know him. So they break up and they’re both constantly almost picking up the phone to call him when something exciting happens.
But they need time to heal and his career takes off and she develops a little bit more non-career life (maybe a family obligation like she has to take in a niece or something?) And when they bump into each other a year or two later the sparks are still there and they have more balance in their own lives and they reunite.
The End.
Maybe I won’t end up writing more than this little sketch of an idea but, look! Fiction! I’m pretty happy I was even able to do this much.
Now, for a Gratuitous Amazon Link. And this one really is gratuitous. I sorted my Goodreads list alphabetically and picked the first one: Embassy Row Book 1: All Fall Down, by Ally Carter. Which reminds me. I need to get the next book in that series. . . .