Seymour Finkelstein and Other Elusive Dreams . .

As a girl, I read the same books over and over again. All the Nancy Drews at least 3 times, my favorite titles (The Password to Larkspur Lane, anyone?) perhaps dozens. Go Ask Alice and Are You There God, its Me Margaret (forget the iPad, remember the pad belt?!) occupied space on my night stand for months. But the book I most remember reading was a somewhat less patrician title called I Saw Him First in which two hormonal teenage girls fight over the new class hunk, Seymour Finklestein. I don't recall the ever so important details, but I'm sure you'll be shocked to find out the narrator, who fought to woo that tall drink of water, Seymour, finally realized the water, tall as it was, didn't run very deep. I don't remember if the girls became friends again, if the narrator ended up going to the prom with the nice kid from her side of the tracks who loved her from the beginning--oh, wait, I've ventured into film. Old Molly Ringwald movies aside (are there any new Molly Ringwald movies?), the righteous indignation that inspired the title of I Saw Him First reared its ugly head in my home this week, in a very non-fictional way.

Laura, the more media savvy of us, sent me several links to several Twitter feeds this week. (So un-savvy am I that I'm not even sure its called a Twitter feed, but I think that's right). If you're interested, they are as follows:

http://twitter.com/jenniferweiner/status/7996896247
http://twitter.com/Litopia/status/8205352478

If you're not that interested, don't worry I'll summarize. The first is a tweet from Jennifer Weiner, she of Good in Bed and In Her Shoes, noting that ABC is reading her pilot about a smart, sassy lady lawyer. The second is an article from the Huffington Post written by two female co-authors waxing poetic on the benefits of co-authoring a novel.

By way of reminder, Laura and I wrote a novel about a smart, sassy lady lawyer. Five years ago we wrote it. And its good. We've been talking to groups for some time now about the benefits of writing together. And we're charming. I promise we are. For the moment, however, I'm abandoning that charm and instead of understanding that sometimes it really is about who you know, or just a matter of timing, or even wondering whether we gave up on The Pecking Order too soon, I'm opting to stomp my feet and grab for Seymour. Laura and I, after all, saw him first.