The Rom-Commers

by Katherine Center

There were not too many people I’d interrupt ABBA for—but yes, fine, Logan Scott was one of them.

Valid!!! ABBA is sacred <3

I thought about all the joy of being one degree of separation

I love this notion; ons of my fav pasttimes.

used up a whole pad of Post-its admiring it.

Mood, love annotating

You had to maximize joy when it fluttered into your life. You had to honor it. And savor it. And not stomp it to death by reminding everyone of everything you’d lost.

such great advce

I almost felt resentful in some tiny compartment in my brain that Logan Scott had called out of nowhere with that crazy Charlie Yates news and complicated things. Today of all days.

Life doesn't wait on our timing or approval

A down-on-his-luck newspaper reporter tries to help a runaway socialite travel by bus to New York in hopes of getting her exclusive story—and falls madly in love with her instead.

Adding It Happened One Night to my watchlist asap.

She really was my Sylvie.

My Sylvie!!! Love this - my Sylvis is a orange cat but same sentiment.

His very dashing father—American, and Black, and from Atlanta—had met his elegant mother—British, and white, and a TV producer—while working as a war correspondent overseas. Logan was raised mostly in London until his dad got a job as a nightly news anchor in Houston, and he showed up as the new kid at my high school.

Love Logan's backstory

With Charlie Yates? I shook my head. “I’m sorry. Wait. I’m going to be living with Charlie Yates?”

Omg one of my fav literary tropes !!! Where some sort of literary professional stays with their client/boss - I.E. Jasmine Guillory's By The Book <3

She can recite every line of When Harry Met Sally to you verbatim.”

Mood

Standing on Charlie Yates’s front steps, I tried to process the domino-fall of realizations their conversation had just set off in my mind: Charlie Yates had no idea I was coming. He had not consented to work with me—nor did he want to work with anyone. The job opportunity of a lifetime that I had abandoned my sick father for and robbed my sister of her future for and dismantled my entire life for did not actually exist.

Yeah this was fucked up of Logan to do

Charlie saw my eyes widen at the sight. “I wasn’t sure what you liked,” he said, “so I just got it all.”

This is a love language to be studied.

“How does anybody become friends? He went through some hard times, and I showed up for him—and then I went through some hard times, and he showed up for me.”

Fr what it feels like making friends as an adult.

I had a theory that we gravitate toward the stories we need in life. Whatever we’re longing for—adventure, excitement, emotion, connection—we turn to stories that help us find it. Whatever questions we’re struggling with—sometimes questions so deep, we don’t even really know we’re asking them—we look for answers in stories.

This is why it's important to make media that matters!!!

As if a cursory glance at anything could ever be the whole story.

We all have a story to tell that can't be judged unless we walk in others' shoes.

Bearing witness to the suffering of others? I don’t know if there’s anything kinder than that. And kindness is a form of emotional courage. And I’m not sure if this is common knowledge, but emotional courage is its own reward.

Emotional courage is so overlooked!

How eager I was to grow up. More than anything, I remember that feeling I kept carrying like a sunrise in my body that my life was really, genuinely, at last, about to begin.

I’ll spray-paint it bubblegum pink and write my name on it in red Sharpie with little hearts! And then I’ll tell everybody I won an Academy Award for a rom-com so rom-commy it was called The Rom-Commers!”

Name drop!!

I just didn’t know how to not be the person who always worried

FYI for nonwriters: blue versus black ink is an essential identity issue.

YES

It wasn’t long before the dining table was covered with crumpled paper, marked-up printed scenes, snack wrappers, soda cans, spiral notebooks, water bottles, not one but two staplers, pencil pouches, a box of Kleenex, a printer attached to a long extension cord, various ChapSticks, highlighters, and old coffee cups—both paper and ceramic.

Thom and I

It got me thinking about how nice it was to do an ordinary thing like go to the market with someone and buy food for a meal you were about to eat together. The companionship and pleasant anticipation. The easy camaraderie. The incidental conversations about anything and nothing:

How it feels to be in love

I had armored up for a field of battle—and somehow we wound up in a field of daisies instead.

Such a metphor of life

We liked deciding between em dashes and commas.

This makes my copyeditor heart so happy <3

“Because the bad thing you’re worried about is never the bad thing that happens.”

Anxiety quote

an orange cat scrambled full tilt

CHARACTER NAMED SYLVIE AND OFANGE CAT!!!

There are books about this.” And then, like books weren’t enough: “There are TED Talks!”

Mood

Stories exist for the emotions they create—and

how you know you've made media that matters

You can’t bring this story to life without coming to life yourself.”

You can't fake it till you make it with this one

Charlie’s eyes went dark. “Don’t you dare.”

Not the random possessiveness - ick!

he opened his eyes, leaned in close, pointed at me, and said, “No six-foot cowboys for you.”

This is such a weird possessive dialogue in this scene.

Charlie Yates. Had dropped down on one knee. In front of me.

This is a cute, albeit cheesy trope moment

“You’re apologizing? In a honky-tonk bar?” This was the moment we’d come here to find. This was the real moment that would bring the fictional one to life. This was the difference between imaginary things and real ones.

I’ll double-knot your laces all night long…”

What a line

We were entering our sixth and final week of writing—which meant I’d only known Charlie for five. Five puny weeks out of my whole lifetime. Why did the idea of some mistress flirting with Charlie bug me so much?

The asides make their reationship seem forced.

The very notion prompted a coughing fit.

The repeated coughing is giving be relapsed or cancer metastized.

The most vital thing you can learn to do is tell your own story”—was

Very telling advice and quote

You know what an elevator pitch is, right? It’s the one-line description of your screenplay that you prepare in case you ever run into your dream director in an elevator.

The asides like this one are annoying

“Shh,” I said, glancing Donna Cole’s way. “What is it with you and the coughing?” “I’m not doing it on purpose,” Charlie said. “It feels performative.”

This is just purely rude and ignorant, knowing that he has health concerns - especially coming from someone who is a caretaker

“You look,” Charlie started, and then he reached out to tuck a little curlicue behind my ear before finishing with “lovely, actually.”

Charlie finally being swoony

Donna looked around the table. “You heard her, folks. No rumors.”

Donna is tbe breath of fresh air the novel needed at this point!

You’re a damned unicorn.

Love this phrasing

“You got that Warner Bros. internship and you didn’t even go.” “I didn’t not go because I didn’t know how to hustle,” I said. “I couldn’t go. Because we found out right after I won that my dad needed another surgery that nobody had seen coming, and there was no one else to look after him.” Charlie looked down then, and I could see him regretting assumptions he’d made about me.

How could Charlie be so dense here??? Clearly from the first mention of this intrrnship, somethinG was a tell that she had to turn it down because of her dad.

“What are you doing?” Charlie said. “Making a list,” I said. “Of women for me to proposition?” he said. “Of potential sources,” I said, like this was Woodward-and-Bernstein-level stuff.

LOVE the grandfathers of journalism being mentioned !!!!

If I’d paused to think it through for any length of time, I would never—never—have suggested it. But I was caught up in the momentum. We’d been arguing all afternoon.

What momentum!?? This just feels rushed from the lack of scenes, circling back to the show not tell.

How unappealing are you, exactly, to not even qualify for a research kiss? How stomach-turning must you be for a man to take up arms against you?

How are you literally making yourself a victim when you tried to pursue him without consent ???

“I get it now.” “Get what?” I asked. Charlie met my eyes. “Why we’re rewriting this story.”

Charlie finally had his eureka moment

There was a bouquet of peonies on the table.

MY FAV

“Peonies are my favorite flower.”

Same girl

then drunkenly tried to coerce him—a man who was clearly so not interested—into bed.

Yea this gave me the ick