Asking For Help: Novel Writing Edition

[rsadelle]

You may have noticed from my last couple of writing goals check-in posts that I haven't done any work on my book for a while. I hit a point where I feel paralyzed. My characters are going on a first date. I've never been on a date, so I have no idea how this should go: What do they talk about? When they leave together, do they take separate cars to one of the characters' houses or do they share a car, leaving one of them to take the other back to her car later? Part of my problem with this story in general is that I want it to be not terrible (really, I totally buy into the idea that erotica doesn't have to be perfect to sell) because the lesbian romances I've read are unbelievably bad. If this were a m/m novel, I would have no problem; I know the patterns for that, and I can write those kinds of stories all day long. But this. I feel like I'm floundering in a space where I have no examples, and I don't have the personal experience to draw from as a substitute. (Also, one of my characters has business ambitions, which I don't understand at all.) It seems like this should be easy anyway since it's just your standard marriage of convenience plot (think Jennifer Crusie's Strange Bedpersons and The Cinderella Deal), but somehow every time I think about, I get paralyzed all over again.

So, help? I don't know if I need ideas for what they can talk about or if I need suggestions of things to read that would help me learn the patterns or if I just need ideas of how to stop being afraid of it. I'll take whatever you've got.