First Draft Romance

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I'm digging into the first of my Korean BBQ wings when there's a ping in my inbox. When I open up the message, I read the name of the attached doc before anything else: Roz_TAKE_TWO_ROMCOM_draft1.docx.

I click on it before reading the rest of the message, just to see how long it is. There's a title page there, one that reads "IT MAY TAKE TWO" in bold, all-caps font, with "Rosalind Lindbergh, 75,687 words" beneath it. I fight the urge to caress my laptop screen with BBQ-smudged fingers and instead close out of the doc to read the short body of Roz's email.

From: rosalindlindbergh@gmail.com

To: mharper18@gmail.com

Subject: My Goddamn Book >:))))))

Hi, Marcella, thank you again for agreeing to be the first pair of non-Catalina eyes on this draft. A quick summary to kick things off for you, I suppose, just so you aren't going in blind:

Noelle Hopkins, a successful executive producer, would rather die than be forced to work with her ex-girlfriend, Hollywood starlet and notorious diva Faye Windsor. But when Noelle's career goes off-track, her only option is to accept a position working alongside Faye—whom she'd promised she'd never speak to again. It sticks them in a small lakeside town because I like those vibes? The two grow closer, then ... sparks. Or something. (That's all I have for a summary, I'm so sorry.)

Like I said, be brutal!!!!! I NEED it. This draft needs it. (I kind of hate it.) (Cat says she loves it but she's too nice sometimes y'know???) Feel free to type up your notes, however. We can reconvene on Monday and discuss your feelings, no matter how far you got. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Best,

Roz

I try to calm my breathing, dipping a second chicken wing into a tiny bowl of ranch. It leaves behind streaks of reddish-brown sauce amongst the white. I take a distracted bite. This is Rosalind Lindbergh's twelfth book. Here. In my inbox. Granted, it's a first draft, and, based on what Roz said to Catalina at Café Crotchety last week, it's not as clean as her usual draft. But I'm still hopeful. This is like an inside look at a process I never thought I'd be able to be a part of.

I'm basically holding Roz's brain baby in my hands.

I can't believe I'm supposed to rip this apart.

Maybe there'll be a lot for me to point out? I'm actually scared to scroll past the title page. To procrastinate, I download the document, then watch as it automatically opens in my laptop's ancient version of Microsoft Word. The load screen takes a minute to catch up, and then the title page loads. I fight back a frown. I'm more of a Google Docs girlie myself, but I don't feel like fighting with uploading anything to my drive today. (It may or may not be chock-full of half-written documents I've been accumulating since high school. She's struggling.)

Cautiously, like it might bite, I scroll down past the title page to the first page of Roz's brand new novel. Her romance.

Noelle Hopkins wasn't known for her patience. To be fair, she wasn't known for a lot of things. To list a few: her looks, her sense of humor, her fashionability. She was a plain thing amongst beautiful people, a piece of straw in a magpie nest. Really, there were only two things Noelle was known for: her uncanny ability to get shit done, and her notoriously bitchy ex.

I'm sucked into the first few chapters, to such an extent, that I forget I'm even supposed to be making comments and taking notes on anything. Nothing jumps out to me as being particularly bad. It's strange, having this raw look inside Roz's head. Her characters feel spikier than usual, like they have all these sharp, interesting edges that haven't been completely rounded out to work with the story yet.