By Lana Schwartz
In the vast and varied world of romance, with its sea of fun, fizzy tropes (second-chance romance, fake relationship, enemies to lovers, and so on), the romance writer has become a trope in and of its — or should I say her — self. The harried, often mousy, and even more often unfulfilled romance writer, who writes of her fantasies instead of living them out. Or perhaps they’re stuck, hopelessly blocked, because they can’t remember what it’s like to love, and it’s only through the touch of a good man can they find their creative breakthrough.
So I guess I can understand why friends and family members and strangers would presume that I, as someone who writes in the romance and romantic comedy genre, am an unabashed romantic. I’ve written romantic comedies, about romantic comedies, and about the godmother of romantic comedies herself, Nora Ephron. My most significant outing, Set Piece, comes this week from 831 Stories.
If and when the topic of dating or love arises, it’s expected, if not anticipated, that I should view the world through the lens of a romantic comedy narrative. A hot guy is kind of rude? Meet-cute. A couple is having differences? Third-act breakup. Any form of resolution? The Happily Ever After.
Many are surprised to learn, then, that I don’t apply this sort of framework to my real life, or anyone else’s. That for as much as I delight in submerging myself into chance encounters and exploring tropes in my work, I am staggeringly, unflinchingly pragmatic on the subject of love.
But this wasn’t always the case. When I was in my early 20s, during an evening out at the bar Fontana’s on the Lower East Side, a man struck up a conversation with me. Or maybe I struck up a conversation with him. Either way, we hit it off. We left the bar, went to the park, and stayed up talking until the sun rose. All things considered, it was extremely romantic. We texted and discussed “meeting up” — the kind of vague plan that still seemed promising at that age. Unfortunately, he flaked. Eventually the whole situation devolved into an unsatisfying, occasional hookup, and as we darted in and out of each other’s lives over the next four years, our status never lived up to the promise created by that first evening. And in retrospect, that’s exactly why I was so slow to cut it off entirely. I couldn’t let such a good meet-cute be wasted on an unhappy ending.
It wasn’t the only time I tried to control the narrative of my life through second, third, and fourth chances. Exes who should’ve been left in the past were allowed to breathe new life in my DMs or texts, because if it was different this time, what happened now would be superimposed over what happened then. Eventually I realized that I was willing to go against my better judgment for the sake of a good story. I was trying to simultaneously write the narrative of my own life and be a character in it.
This is not to say that I don’t believe in romantic love; quite the opposite, in fact. What I’ve instead come to celebrate about love is its mundanity. Like any other task or skill you want to master, it requires showing up day in and day out. I believe the most romantic thing you can do for someone is not a big, bold gesture, but instead finding ways to make their life a little brighter, a little better everyday. I believe love is something you have to yourself actively seek out. The idea of love finding you or the right person being “out there” is admittedly a little silly to me; there is no other blessing in life, be it friendship, wealth, or success, do we say will show up at your doorstep, when you’re not looking, when you least expect it. And yes, the fact that most people meet today via dating apps, with their nefarious algorithms and inappropriate messages and pictures of penises, could be blamed for my disillusion, but this wouldn’t be true entirely. Dating apps can easily reduce us to our basest, shallowest instincts, but there will always be people who want to meet and date in this world. It’s not about the start point or destination, it’s about the journey. People break up, marriages end, but that doesn’t make the relationship or the people involved in it failures — and I think it’s possessing this pragmatism that lends itself to a more forgiving worldview.
If anything, I think this sort of feet-on-the-ground approach can help me to find a distinct entry point into my work. In Set Piece, though the main characters Jack and CJ fulfill that celebrity-normal person trope, theirs isn’t exactly a story of whirlwind romance. It’s about two adults learning to make space for another person, how and when to say yes and no to opportunity, and creating something real in a world that increasingly values what’s easy, synthetic, and fleeting.
Truthfully, I can’t help but bristle at the idea that because I write romance, I must be a hopeless romantic. Frankly, I find it kind of sexist. When women write fiction, we’re more likely to be accused of self-inserts, our protagonists simply fictionalized versions of ourselves, the lines between our real and imagined worlds blurred. As if inventing whole cloth is a skill that escapes us. No one thinks a man is a wizard or dragon because he wrote 1,000 pages of fantasy. Ephron, responsible for some of our best romantic comedies of all time, was herself not a particularly romantic person. And while, of course, hopeless romantics have given us beautiful and moving love stories, Ephron with her caustic nature was still able to sell us on Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox.
I don’t need my work to look like my life, or my life to look like my work — whether it’s a sweeping love story or something a little more down-to-earth. Getting to write something that surprises even me is half the fun.