Calloway “Lo” Evans wants to make writing her career, but in this day and age, she’s struggling to get an agent. Jackson Hayes is a social media sensation playing for the Los Angeles baseball circus, the Screenplays. The two grew up together and outside of a few sharp jabs at family get togethers, they haven’t spoken in years. Lo’s brother, who just so happens to be Jackson’s best friend, realizes they can help each other out…if they can just handle being around each other.

Like Lo, I also suffer from ADHD and that means when the dopamine runs out I do not want to do certain things (like editing).

In order to get things accomplished, I gamify everything, and creating this report was a bit like a game to me. Watching each chapter I edited build into a story and in a way I could visualize was a blast. It also helped me stay organized. Were they visiting restaurants too much? Did I mess up someone’s hair color, or a side character’s name or trait? Where are the lulls or plot holes? More importantly, do their feelings grow in a way that feels real? I have a larger one I use for editing, but thought this might be a fun snippet to view to get a better idea of the book.

I, in no way, shape, or form, think this is a good recording. I am not delusional and wish to narrate my own book (please, I leave that to the professionals), but I wanted to hear it out loud, and hear it in the tone of voice I wrote it in and thought it might be helpful. Maybe it’s harmful because of my dreadful narration, who knows!?

Again, trying to trick myself into editing my manuscript led to a hyperfixation on creating a few examples of what I picture when I think about the “call outs” in the book. (This is just a random sampling of a few of the call outs.)

When I created these characters so much of their story played out on social media in my head. The flirting, the banter…I thought of real celebrity couples that use social media to tease or flirt with each other (Kristen and Dax, Blake and Ryan, etc). I thought of Buzzfeed articles and Deuxmoi and Comments by Celebs and all the pop-culture sites that post about the latest hot couple and how this can be leveraged by my characters or their PR teams. I thought of the comments I see under social media posts and Goodreads reviews and how weirdly free people feel behind a keyboard, willing to say the most insane things (guilty!). Obviously I don’t expect to see these in my manuscript, but this vibe is what I envision, and creating them helped me push through the editing slump.

I’m open to edits, constructive criticism, and new ideas for this book, but given my background in marketing and my overall inability to sit still, I pulled some trends to show the relevancy of a lot of my choices. (Growth of trends are below the Goodreads/Amazon screenshot.)

I’ve searched the terms “faux dating” and “foe dating” and there are…shockingly, no books with this name? I’m not sure how I lucked out. I’ve searched Goodreads, Amazon, and Google to check the competitiveness and see what other books pop up. It seems like a great title for SEO/search with low competition when specifically looking for a book with that title. I have been told by an Amazon marketing genius that Amazon will love the title “Faux Dating.”

“Enemies to Lovers” 5 year growth +1240%