It’s difficult for me to pinpoint the first time I realized I wanted to write a book. And it’s a pretty weird thing to tell someone when they ask what I do in my spare time {what spare time?}: “I’m writing a book.” It’s a hefty project, but so far, I’m enjoying the journey. In college, I wrote a weekly relationship column. Since the birth of Sex & the City, I have a feeling college girls across the country were in my same shoes—putting their dating lives out there for all to read, criticize and praise.
I remember years later, when I stopped writing the column, I wanted to combine all of my columns into one book, with commentary describing the back-story. That’s probably where it started. But then my ideas evolved after I started reading more first-hand accounts of relationships. I started reading strictly biographies and memoirs. I read newspaper columns. As I’ve mentioned before The New York Times’ Modern Love column on Sundays is one of my favorites. I am constantly finding subjects in there that I can relate to, and inspire me.
The following Modern Love column is one of those. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
That’s My Pride Beneath the Love Train {Sunday, November 25, 2007} By Margaret Meehan:
By age 23, I had romanticized cigarettes, chocolate souffle, my pet cat and (through the TV screen) James Franco on “Freaks and Geeks.” But I had yet to experience an actual human romance.
Having spent my school years on the sidelines of love, I naturally scorned anyone who was in the game. So I arrived in New York two years ago as a self-righteous anti-romantic who mocked starry-eyed idealists, considered sex a nonthinking act between two imbeciles, and pitied women who lost their identities and independence as they plummeted into that meaningless void called “love.”
If the Love Train ever came to my station, I planned on scoffing at the fools aboard, waving from my platform of self-satisfied singleness as they pulled away and became a blur of maudlin, gag-worthy sentiment on the horizon.
But then it happened. One Thursday evening, as I was pounding vodka sodas at an East Village bar, the Love Train did find its way to my scowling gargoyle heart. It slowed at my stool with a hissing of brakes, and off he stepped. And to my surprise, not only did I welcome him with outstretched arms and love-struck awe, I then proceeded to sacrifice every scrap of my pride, self-worth and morality throughout the course of our one-year relationship. All in the name of what I detested most: love!
The Bitter Lemon 
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