I Guess Every Woman's Got One of These Series In Her

I have finally reached the point where I have bowed down beneath the weight of inevitiability: I am going to have to write a chick-lit novel.

My novel is about a young striving post-collegiate adrift in a cold, cruel sea of career choices, bobbing about on the murky waters of romantic entanglements -- coincidentally, her name is also Alicia, and her hair (her best feature) is long and red. This is the one good physical feature she as a chick-lit heroine is allowed to have -- oh, well, alright, we'll buck the trends and give her kickass legs as well, but everything else is going to have to be subpar because we want her to be a good sympathetic Everywoman. We can't go around giving our heroines perfect T&A, because nobody but nobody on earth who is both human and female looks at such fictional creations and goes, "Yep, I too know what it is like to have an amazing ass." They just don't. Even if they do, as happens, have an amazing ass.

Alicia, unfortunately, does not. I mean, it's alright -- just nothing special, is all. Which, QED, is fitting.

But of course, mentally she can be a little more up to scratch. She's been told all her life she's pretty bright, and was eventually persuaded to believe it, up to a point. Also, she wants things, this Alicia we're making up as we go. And although the things she wants are simple, they are also enormous: all she asks for out of life is true love, buckets of money, and the adulation of total strangers.

How on earth is she to attain three such gigantic objects? Especially when there are so many obstacles on the path to each?

Obstacles to Buckets of Money: Alicia currently works a low-paying job in an independent bookstore, and while she has no ambition to own a bookstore of her own one day her overall satisfaction with how she earns her living means that she's not really likely to suddenly get the urge to climb the corporate ladder purely in search of a more lucrative option. Ideally she could make buckets of money doing something immensely rewarding, but that doesn't happen without a lot of preperatory work and is probably going to be one of those long-term things. She did recently have a bit of a financial windfall (see below), but worries it won't last long.

Obstacles to Anonymous Adulation: theoretically, she already has this. Alicia, weirdly to her mind, is an honest-to-God Jeopardy champion. This has taught her as nothing else could that between Fame and Fortune, she'll take Fortune every time (see above).

Obstacles to True Love: picky picky picky. Picky -- and weird, and overeducated, and aware of it. A difficult combination in the most opportune of environments, and her current routine (work, home, trivia, karaoke bar with the other regulars) is full of the same faces. Pleasant, interesting faces, but little to no romantic entanglements forecasted. What seems to happen is that the kind of people who'd hit on the cute redhead are scared off by the Jeopardy championship, and the kind of people who would love to date a Jeopardy champion are damnably shy and unassuming. Much like Alicia herself. She'll talk you blue in the face, but don't let that fool you. In fact, this innate timidity might be her biggest Obstacle to becoming a full-fledged human being as well as one half of a couple. She does see quite a few intriguing types floating around the fringes of her habitual society, but always manages to somehow talk herself out of being forward. She's interested, but doesn't want anyone to know until it's been adequately proven that her interest is worthwhile. Not necessarily requited -- but she would like to be known as someone who has excellent taste in men, and worries sometimes that this is not actually always the case.

So that's our setup. A typical scene -- Bridget Jones style -- might go a little something like this:

Time, Month, Day, early 2006. Status: Fretful.

Complimented egregiously by mildly attractive nerdy bartender Ben, while drunk. Him, not me. Compared to da Vinci painting -- in fact, to a specific da Vinci painting, the name of which had escaped him. Have since resisted going on Google Images and searching for "da Vinci" and "redhead," but am not sure how much longer can hold out. Possibility of reading irksome Mary Magdalene-and-secret society conspiracy theories a deterrent.

No reason for interest. Painters and bartenders usually send up red flags. However, this one appears to be part of that segment of humanity one just plain likes, with very little reason. Granted, he looks kind of geeky and sad in a cute kind of way, one's traditional type. Lanky with brown hair, etc.

Time will tell.