Looking for a Love Story by Louise Shaffer

attention to all the laughing and fun chat that was swirling around me, while the computer back in the hotel room haunted me.
    Andy was the one who noticed how distracted I was. “Go up to the room and work,” she’d say, with her warm laugh. “You know that’s what you want to do. We can entertain ourselves.”
    By the time we were back in the States, I had finally written a proposal of sorts. Nancy took me out for a drink and I showed it to her. She read it and paused a really long time before she said, “Well, we all know it’s the details that make the story.” Then she added, “Why don’t you write up a few chapters to flesh this out before we send it to Gramercy?”
    “No problem,” I said cheerily. Then I went home and threw up.
    But I was still determined not to disappoint Jake. I continued going to gallery openings and fancy dinners held to raise money for research on obscure diseases—Jake and I never got invitations for A-list illnesses like cancer—but I was crying a lot, and I’d gained ten pounds.
    Jake tried to help. “Why don’t you join a gym?” he suggested. “It’ll get you out of the house and away from that damn computer for a couple of hours.” I tried to explain that I needed concentrated time—blocks of it—to do my kind of work. “Okay,” he said, and he gave me a little kiss. “But it’s so depressing to watch you.”
    For the next few days, I did my damnedest not to be depressing. I swear I tried. But it seemed like every time I might be getting a handle on my story, I had to quit to get dressed up so Jake and I could go somewhere and hang out with a friend who suddenly seemed to me to have the IQ of an avocado.
    “When did you become antisocial?” Jake asked angrily, as we were going home in a cab one night. I didn’t have an answer for him.
    I wrote and deleted the first chapters of my book five times.And I learned the painful difference between writing a book you love and throwing words at a book you wish you wanted to write. I started being afraid it would be like this for the rest of my life.
    I told Jake I had to take a rain check when he asked me to go out to California. He had impressed the starlet from Italy and was in negotiations with her people to work as the director of a documentary about endangered species for her wildlife charity.
    “This could be the start of a whole new career for me, Francesca,” he said. “I’ve been a cinematographer before, but this is my first shot at directing. I’d like you to be with me. I went with you on your book tour.”
    “Please try to understand,” I begged. “I just need to get an outline on paper.”
    “You’ve been saying that for months.”
    “Weeks,” I corrected, with what I hoped was a cute grin.
    Jake didn’t grin back.
    “It just seems longer.”
    “You can say that again.”
    “I don’t know why this book is so hard. I didn’t have this kind of trouble with Love, Max.”
    “Stop worrying. Just sit down and get it done. This is getting frustrating.”
    I FINALLY ADMITTED my problem to Nancy, who told me in soothing tones that what I was suffering from was called Second Book Syndrome. “It happens all the time,” she said. “When you have a hit with a first book, the expectations can be so great that you freeze. You’ll work your way out of it.”
    But it didn’t feel like I was working my way out of it. It felt like I was drowning.
    At the same time Jake was out in LA, where he was being winedand dined by the starlet and her people. And of course he hung out with our pal Andy—who had some bad news to report. She hadn’t been able to sell Love, Max to the television people.
    “She said to tell you it has nothing to do with the book,” Jake said on the phone. “Lifetime has too many projects in the pipeline already, and Hallmark is putting everything into turnaround because of budget problems. The Big Three aren’t doing long form anymore, and the actor Andy pitched, the one with the