Dating By Committee
February 24, 2006 by A Slice of Orange in category 25 Days of Romance, Contests, From Our Archives tagged as Contest - 25 Days of Romance, Jenny Hansen, romance, Valentine's Day
JI’ve always had a good track record among my friends for dating losers. I spent all of my teens and 20’s perfecting this gift. Every guy I dated was potentially Mr. Right and I would try the idea of “forever” on to see how it fit, which it never did.
Finally, the day came when I turned 35. I’d broken up with the last Mr. Right and was moaning about the years that I’d wasted. Was I going to ever get married, ever have children, ever belong in a partnership with someone? The prospects were looking dim.
Obviously, with a Romance Record like mine, I have very patient girlfriends. When I bemoaned the wasteland of my love life and the biological clock that was hurtling me with G-force toward menopause, my three best and most patient girlfriends listened to my tale of woe.
Every one of them said the same thing to me: I needed a better system in my quest for Mr. Right. I needed to let someone who knew better (they all three mentioned that they were happily married) be pivotal in the decision making process. In short, I needed to date by committee.
My current plan was Speed Dating. Each agreed that I needed to continue with that plan. I got to meet maximum numbers of men (10-15 in an evening) with minimum effort (I just had to sit and talk to them each for 3-5 minutes).
The Dating Committee encouraged me to date as many of these prospects as possible with one single caveat: at least one person on the Committee had to meet them before 1) any significant physical contact, defined as anything past a good-night kiss outside the vehicle I was driving home or 2) by the third date—whichever came first.
I threw myself into Speed Dating, often having as many as four “first dates” in one week (completely exhausting, I don’t recommend it). I was excited that these men shared so many desirable characteristics in a first date, most had jobs, their real hair and wanted to meet women. However, not a single one of them tempted me to either get to the significant physical contact or go on the third date.
My friends began to suspect that Secret Dating was occurring. I assured them this wasn’t the case, just hadn’t found anyone worthy of putting before the Committee yet from Speed Dating. I began to look around at Rapid Dating and Pre-Dating, to beef up my pool of prospects.
Then my mother died suddenly and my 35 year-old world got a reality check. I did all the tasks that accompany death, and I grieved. I stopped dating completely, I’d decided that life was too short to spend on losers. My patient girlfriends dragged me back into life, ignoring my bitter protests, and one night one of them coerced me out on the town.
We went to a place in Newport Beach. I danced and danced with my girlfriend and her husband and had a lovely time. In the middle of this evening, I met a man. We danced. He bought me a drink. We were beginning to engage in the usual inconsequential dating chatter. I had forgotten completely about the pact to date only by Committee when my girlfriend, who’d downed enough Vodka Tonics to be entertaining, zoomed up to exercise her Committee Rights.
She stopped in front of the guy who came to be known as Newport Steve and held out her hand in introduction. “Hi, I’m her girlfriend Mary. How are you?” And she proceeded to pepper the man with questions.
What do you do? Oh, a Computer Guy! Uh-huh. Great! Jen works in computers!
Where do you live? Oh, Newport Beach, close by! Great!
How old are you? Forty-four? (She gave him a suspicious stare.)
Have you ever been married?
Really, did you have any kids? No? Well do you want to have kids?
(I tried to slink off right about this time but my girlfriend trains dogs for a living and she’s got a grip like a pit bull.)
How do you feel about pets? Oh, you’re afraid of dogs? Well, cause she has a dog, but Hoshi’s a really nice dog. She really likes men, Hoshi, not Jen. Well, I mean Jen likes men too. Anyway, you guys will do great!
What kind of dog? An Akita.
And on it went. Newport Steve stood up to the Inquisition, answering her questions without stammering or stuttering. He joined us and at the end of the evening we traded information on cocktail napkins. Less than a week later we went out.
Bit by bit we fell in love, though I kept struggling against the feeling, thinking about my other Mr. Rights. Steve was always relaxed and so certain that we were meant to be together and I couldn’t figure out how he “just knew.”
A few months after we met, I had my 36th birthday and he took me out to a wonderful dinner. He gave me beautiful jewelry and watched me blow out my candle. I made the wish to keep him always while he smiled at me from across the table.
“What did you wish for on your birthday?” I asked, referring to the birthday he had right before we met.
He looked in my eyes for a moment before he answered. “I wished for you,” he said. “I’m pretty sure your mom heard me from Heaven and pulled a few strings.”
I started crying, right there in the middle of the restaurant, and I felt my mother’s spirit. I could hear her voice in my head, telling me to quit worrying and relax. I realized in one of those stunning moments of clarity that my former boyfriends were all Mr. Maybe, practice trials to help me truly appreciate the man that my mom “picked out.” Evidently, she’d been on the Committee the whole time.
Newport Steve is now My Steve, and I can’t imagine my life without him.
Thanks, Mom!
Jen Crooks writes women’s fiction, chick lit and short stories as Jenny Hansen. She has been a member of OCC since 2001 and has served on OCC’s Board of Directors as Newsletter Editor, Membership Director and Program Director. She is currently the Contest Coordinator for the 2006 Orange Rose Contest for Unpublished Writers.
10 0 Read moreWriter’s Life: E.D. Stands for Emotional Depth
January 3, 2006 by A Slice of Orange in category From Our Archives tagged as Craft, humor, romantic comedy, Sandra Paul, writer's Life
Writer’s Life: E.D. Stands for Emotional Depth
By Sandra Paul
I used to lack emotional depth.
Hey, don’t pity me. You probably still do. You just might not know it yet.
After all, I wasn’t aware of my own deficiency until about my fifth book. But when my editor returned my manuscript for revisions there it was, right in the margin next to my dramatic, climatic resolution. Plain as day, my editor had written, Lacks E.D.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t plain as day at first–because I had no idea what, or possibly who, E.D. might be.
So I called my editor to find out.
“E.D. stands for emotional depth,” she told me. “The book needs more of it.”
“C’mon,” I said, trying not whine at the thought of doing more work. “My word count is only 50,000 words. This isn”t War and Peace here.”
“No, it certainly isn’t,” she agreed, much too readily. “But even in a short contemporary romance with, I might add, extra wide margins, the reader needs to come away emotionally satisfied. I don’t even know what your characters are feeling there at the end.”
I honestly didn’t understand how she could say that. I’d written it plain as day (really!) right there on the page. “The heroine feels sad,” I said, quoting directly from the manuscript, “That the hero has found out what she’s done. He feels betrayed and angry.”
“I need more.”
I sighed. “Okay. How ’bout I say she’s very sad and he’s very angry?”
She sighed louder. “I’m not looking for adjectives here,” she replied, very heartlessly. “What I want is to feel something. To feel what your characters are feeling. Go deeper, Sandy. I know you can do it.”
I hung up the phone feeling (in case it isn’t plain as day) very resentful. Easy for her to say. She was just an editor with a stable at the time of over thirty writers, with a slush pile higher than her head next to her desk, who merely spent ten to twelve hours a day editing, writing copy, proofing, and other stuff like that. Obviously, she was much too busy to understand the stress that I, a one-book-a-year (more or less) writer, was under.
Brooding on my editor’s lack of empathy, I went and had a leisurely lunch, then took a three hour nap. When I awoke, I went and did what I should have done in the first place.
I called my critique partners.
“I think it’s fine,” Angie told me after I’d read the last chapter to her five times. “In fact, if anything, there’s too much emotion. I suggest you delete the whole thing.”
She slammed down the phone. Gingerly, I hung up, too. O-kaaay. Apparently I wasn’t the only one dog-paddling in the shallow end of the emotional pool. I then moved on to Barbara J.
“This isn’t just your typical sweet traditional,” Barbara J. informed me. “This is a transformation story about a woman who, after doing something on impulse, learns from that experience to quit being afraid of life. To start going after what she wants.”
I have to admit, I liked the sound of that. But it wasn’t much help for my E.D. problem. So I called Barbara B.
“The universal appeal of this book is that it’s about anyone who’s ever done something stupid, and had to move past it,” she told me. “You need to explore that emotional reaction for the reader. Use the five senses.”
“But I’ve never done what the heroine did. And I never would.”
“No, but you’ve done other stupid things. Use those.”
Totally inspired, I hung up the phone. As usual, Barbara B. was right. I had done stupid thing—lots of them. I’d use the pain and embarrassment I’d lived through to make this book come alive for the reader.
So, after discussing the problem once more with my Artist’s Way group, a dozen people at OCC, and a paunchy, bald guy who happened to be pumping gas at the same time as me at the nearby 7-Eleven, I got down to work.
I thought of all the times I’d humiliated myself and I wrote—and rewrote—until I could smell the heroine’s fear when the hero discovers she’s the one who’d mooned him from the company van. Until I could see the horror on his handsome (yet rugged) face, when he realizes it was her, his trusted secretary (not to mention the woman he’s learned to love) that committed the dreadful deed. I wrote until I could hear the anguish in her soft voice as she struggles to explain, until I could taste their despair as they realize—Mooner and Moonee both—that the memory of what she did will forever be there between them. A big, white blot on their love.
I sank to emotional depths so deep that even those little, jelly-like fluorescent fishes from National Geographic couldn’t survive there. Then I made the hero and heroine both very, very happy when they somehow (cause I don’t want to give the story away here!) manage to overcome all that to live happily ever after.
And when I finally turned the book in—just one month past deadline—I knew I’d done a good job. In fact, my editor told me it was one of the best—if not the best—mooning book she’d ever read.
So, emotional depth? You betcha I’ve got it now.
Step aside, Leo Tolstoy.
A Visit with Emma Holly and Susan Elizabeth Phillips
August 20, 2005 by A Slice of Orange in category From Our Archives tagged as Author Interview
OCC just celebrated “Awesome August Here are the details of the day from a Program Director’s POV:
We had Emma Holly visit us in the morning, and this five foot dynamo gave a workshop that made several women start fanning themselves from the sheer HOTNESS of the content. That was a first for me in my time as Program Director and I really enjoyed her tips on sexy writing. She gave us many tips to spice up our scenes and first piece of advice was to “get in touch with our kinks,” so Ladies and Gentlemen:GET BUSY!
Emma kept making me laugh because she’d get the steam level to rising, then she’d pause, glance at us, take a lo-o-o-ng sip of her water, and pick up where she left off. Her comedic timing was dead-on funny. She gave two of her ARCs (advanced release copies) away as door prizes and I don’t know who won them but I certainly hope that one of those people will loan their book to me when they’re done. I don’t know if I can wait until October 4th to find out who did what to who.
The Board of Directors changed tactics and strategies all day, almost as fast as America West changed Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ flight schedule! (Herein, she’ll be referred to as SEP to save typing.) We started lunch thinking we’d see SEP at about 12:30 and by the end of lunchtime, this Program Director was wondering if SEP would EVER get to California. We updated the membership over the next hour, “plane is delayed, plane left, etc.,“ until finally the plane arrived and I heaved a sigh of relief. It was the first time I’d ever been happy to have my phone ring in the middle of a meeting.
I spoke with SEP and she told me that “I didn’t even need to introduce her. She’d have her notes in her hand when she stepped out of the car and she’d just run in and start talking”and darned if that isn’t exactly what she did—another first for me in Programs. God she gave the best talk! Diane Pershing told me afterward that she rarely takes notes and SEP had her scribbling away.
We found out that Susan is a “seat of the pants” writer, that she has a tremendous fear of the blank page and that it takes her about a year to write each book. She doesn’t take a break in between books. She gave us tips on writing subplots, flashbacks, how to fix scenes and many, many more “million dollar” tips.
If anyone missed getting a handout and would like one, just send a note to us on the Craft Loop or email me privately and I’ll forward it to you. Susan gave me more in 40 minutes of talking that I ever knew was possible. And she told me four times that we were the most organized group that she’d ever seen.
Thanks to everyone on the Board who zigged and zagged with each change to the schedule and to all the OCC members that stayed on site and waited for SEP so we could give her a tremendous welcome!
The last tidbit I wanted to add about August. Susan Elizabeth Phillips told me that OCC members have the best collection of shoes that she’s ever seen. I thought that was pretty amusing and wanted to encourage you all to bring that fancy footwear to Conference next year so you could have a built in conversation opener .
So, August was awesome and I am on to planning the September meeting with Michele Scott and Leanne Banks. Michele’s talk is on “Getting Your Foot in the Door” and Leanne will be talking about “Developing the Relationship Between the Hero and Heroine.” I especially can’t wait for the brainstorming session that Leanne is conducting later in the evening during the guest reception. I hope to see you all volunteering at the September meeting so you can be part of that.
See you next month!
~ Jen Crooks
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