Fun with Richard and Jane

Those of you who’ve been around for awhile are familiar with Jane and Richard from my writing lesson examples. I believe at the moment, Richard is buried somewhere in Jane’s boss’s backyard while she enjoys her promotion. Anyway, Anemone and Liz are writing a romance novel in Rest in Pink, which has led to many meta moments like this one:

Anemone picked up the folder she’d brought to the breakfast table. It was pink, so I already had an idea of what was in it. “She’s a thirty-three-year-old writer—”

“No,” I said.

“—of romance novels. Why not?”

“Writers writing about writers is not good. It’s like grad students writing short stories about grad students. Very meta and self-serving.”

“Write what you know, Liz.”

“Also writers lead very boring lives, sitting around in t-shirts and pajama pants, drinking Diet Coke and googling for minutiae. You can’t get a story out of that.”

But then Bob, who has no respect for my creative process, pointed out that Richard and Jane were actually Dick and Jane. So I had Liz tell Anemone that, and then they googled for Dick and Jane so they could steal the plots–yes, by then I was way past the book we were writing–and, well, here’s Liz and Anemone talking about the book they’re going to write about Jane and Richard. I’m pretty sure none of this except for the first one will appear in Rest in Pink, but you never know. Also every story cited below is real, including the one with Dora.

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