Chapter 19 Rowan

PROFESSOR MIRANDA EVERETTlives in Brookline, a picturesque town less than thirty minutes from Emerson on the green line—although calling something in Boston picturesque is a bit like calling romance novels romantic.

"Welcome, welcome," she says with an easy smile, beckoning Kait and me inside. Professor Everett is chic in a patterned wrap dress and suede heels, hair glossy. "Get out of the cold; take a seat wherever you like."

A few other classmates are already here, spread across the living room. An accent wall is painted a deep teal, a gallery wall arranged above a lush velvet sectional, where Owen, once again clad in his bowler hat, is showing Sierra something in his notebook. Soft jazz plays from some hidden sound system so modern that it remains the same volume no matter where you are in the room. Then there's Professor Everett's framed National Book Award over the mantel of a real wood-burning fireplace. Coziness personified.

"I want to live here," I whisper to Kait as we take off our coats, handing Professor Everett the Trader Joe's snacks we brought. She adds them to the growing pile on the coffee table.

Kait unwinds her scarf and fluffs out her hair. "Already planning to get ‘lost' later just so I can explore the rest of it."

Professor Everett does this a few times a year: invites the creative writing cohort over for a potluck and a night of literary games. As close as I was with my teachers in high school, I definitely never went to any of their homes, and while it wouldn't have sounded appealing back then, there's something about a professor's invitation that feels so incredibly collegiate. I even dressed up, a white collared blouse under a deep green sweaterdress, thick black tights, and vintage pumps.

We always feel like equals in Professor Everett's class, no patronizing, no arrogance. A fact that's cemented when someone addresses her and she laughs and says, "Okay, I get that it's very polite and all, but you really can just call me Miranda." She lifts her glass of wine—sparkling cider for the under-twenty-ones—in a toast. "I'm so glad you all could make it tonight. Keeping with the theme, I don't want this to be overly formal, either. Just a casual get-together of literary nerds."

Kait and I take seats on a pair of folding chairs near the fireplace while Professor Everett—Miranda—explains the first game. "I call it Chaos Story," she says. We'll each write a sentence inspired by a prompt and then pass our sheet of paper to the next person to write the next sentence. And so on, and so on, until the last person reads the piece out loud. Later we'll divide into groups for critique sessions and cap off the night with a freewrite.

"Naturally," Felix says from a goldenrod armchair, because we all know how attached she is to her freewrites.

I reach into my bag for Neil's notebook and a pen as Sierra passes me a carafe of spiced cider. This is the kind of dreamy writer gathering I've always imagined, and I want to soak up every detail.

Each round of Chaos Story, there are new rules: we can't use any words that begin with the letter A, or we can't use any adjectives or adverbs. Miranda plays too, adding herself to our haphazard circle and tipping over a vintage hourglass each time we pass our sheets of paper.

Next to me, Kait taps her pen on a legal pad. "Is ‘always' an adverb?"

"Yes," says Tegan. "Because it describes how you do something."

"Are you sure?" Felix asks. This sparks a lively debate until we finally use our phones to look it up.

My phone buzzes with a text halfway through the next round. I'm about to turn it to silent when the name catches my attention. It's not someone who ever really texts me, except for when we traded numbers at the beginning of the summer before all of us met up at Golden Gardens one afternoon.

Sean Yee: hey rowan, it's sean. have you heard from neil lately?

I frown down at it, thumbing out a quick response.

I saw him four weeks ago and we texted just this morning.

Sean: oh ok

Sean: so he's alive lol

Rowan: unless someone with annoyingly good grammar kidnapped him and stole his phone, yes.

Sean: he hasn't been replying to my texts. same with cy and adrian

That's strange. Out of character for him. Sure, maybe his texts have seemed a little shorter than they usually are, but we've both been busy studying. That misstep I made, bringing up his dad—he hasn't mentioned it since.

I can go back to waiting, hoping that one day he'll decide he's ready. Even if the thought of him aching on his own is enough to crack my heart open.

I tell Sean I'm sorry, that maybe he's just been swamped, before putting my phone away and trying to push past any lingering worry. Surely it's just stress. I've gone a week without texting Kirby and Mara—at least, I'm fairly sure I have.

When we break out into critique groups to share snippets of our works in progress, I peek at my printed-out pages as others start reading aloud, flicking away lint on my sweaterdress. I decided to add a new chapter to my Hannah and Hayden story, the book I've been working on for the past couple years that never feels done. In it, they're on a company retreat and they've just discovered there's only one hotel room left—with only one bed, naturally. One of my favorite tropes, and I couldn't believe I hadn't found a way to use it in this book yet.

I should feel solid about it—I know these characters, Hannah's fierce ambition and Hayden's reserved-but-secretly-sweet nature. And yet as I reread, some of my sentences sound stilted. Awkward.

And worst of all: boring.

They looked at each other, and then at the single key dangling from the receptionist's hand.

I couldn't have picked a better word than "looked"?

Hannah's gaze held Hayden's, a silent question passing between them.

Okay, at least now they're gazing—

"We'll take it," she said, looking at the key and then back at Hayden, whose cheeks were starting to turn pink.

Jesus Christ, how many times can these idiots look at each other? Did I even read this back before I printed it out?

(Yes. And apparently I decided it was fine.)

Only right now it is solidly not fine, especially as I listen to everyone else read, feeling worse and worse about my only-one-bed scene. Kait's humor is unparalleled. Noor's sentences are sharp and choppy in the thriller she's working on. Sierra's literary fiction is beautiful, even if I still don't fully understand it.

Everyone has a voice, and apparently I left mine back in Seattle.

If I ever had one to begin with—something I'm seriously starting to doubt.

On Gazebo Night, I was so full of inspiration and optimism. I don't know why I can't have that all the time. Surely cheap wine isn't the answer.

Then there's the thing I haven't let myself think about that's been tapping away at the back of my brain. You're in love but you can't write about it. Something's wrong with you.

It's ridiculous—surely plenty of romance authors are deeply in love with their partners.

The group claps for Sierra before turning to me. Fuck, this is going to be brutal. Slowly, I unclench my fists around the pages as a half dozen eyes flick toward me. A thick swallow, my heart thumping in my throat.

It's starting to feel like I can't measure up to any of them. How can I truly feel like I belong if I can't do the one thing I came here specifically to do? Maybe I shouldn't be here, not in Professor Everett's beautiful home, not in this major, maybe not even on this campus.

"Sorry—I have to—" And I spring to my feet and escape.

I only make it as far as the kitchen before everything starts spinning and I have to press my back to the counter to keep from collapsing. My breaths are coming harder, faster. I guzzle down another cup of cider.

I should be able to do this. Why can't I fucking do this?

I half thought Kait might come after me—and half hoped she would—so I'm surprised when it's Miranda's voice I hear.

"Rowan?" she asks. "Is everything okay?"

I do my best to appear as though I haven't been having a mental breakdown and/or crisis of confidence. I lift a hand and give her a weak smile as she enters the kitchen.

"Just your standard why-is-everything-I-write-garbage kind of breakdown," I say, trying to sound light and breezy.

"Ah. I see." She gestures for me to sit down at the sleek marble kitchen counter, so I tuck my dress underneath me and hop up onto a wooden stool. Bowls of overflow snacks cover the countertop, but my stomach isn't having it. In the other room, everyone is sharing, laughing. "Is this maybe why you've been busy every day after class?"

"I'm sorry." The guilt underscores the way my pulse pounds, not good enough, not good enough, not good enough. "About this, too. I don't want to disrupt the night for you or for anyone else."

Miranda fills a glass of water, placing it in front of me before taking the seat across from me. "You have nothing to be sorry for. Unless you're the one who made those oatmeal raisin cookies, because—" At that, she screws up her nose, and we both laugh. There was definitely an overly doughy consistency to them. "I feel I've gotten to know you a little through your work and during class, even if you tend to be a bit quiet."

I have to wince at that. In high school, "Rowan Roth" and "quiet" would never have been uttered in the same sentence, unless that sentence was "Be quiet, Rowan Roth and Neil McNair are about to get into it."

"I've just been… a little blocked." A gulp of water. "I've never felt this way before. I've written for myself even after long days when I was working on an essay for class. I'd open up my work in progress and the words were just there. I didn't have to fight nearly as hard for them. I haven't been fully happy with anything I've turned in, if I'm being honest. And I'm starting to wonder if I'm even supposed to be in this class."

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," she says, and when my eyes widen in horror, she's quick to correct herself: "Not if you're supposed to be in this class, because I firmly believe you are. I'm not concerned about the quality of your writing, but I can see some of the pressure you're putting on yourself—even right now. Writing for yourself is very different from writing for an audience. I had a similar experience with my second book."

"I loved your second book. More than your first," I tell her. "All those reviewers who said the themes didn't seem as universal as the first, or that the characters weren't likable… Not every character needs to be likable for a book to be good. I mean—" I break off, realizing too late that maybe she didn't read the reviews or doesn't want to know what critics thought.

But she just says, "You know what, I think I prefer that one too."

At the opposite end of the kitchen, the backyard door swings open. A tall, bearded man dashes in, carrying two jugs of cider.

Upon seeing me, his expression morphs into alarm. "Sorry! I'm not here!"

Miranda laughs. "Thanks, Jon."

"No problem." Her boyfriend, husband—whoever he is—holds a finger to his lips before he disappears outside. "You never saw me."

I expect Miranda to explain him in some way, but she seems thoroughly immersed in our conversation. "And you've always wanted to write romance?" she asks, stirring her drink.

"I've loved it since I was kid," I say. "I tried to write about it in that first assignment, but I know it sounded… a little flat."

"Not flat," she says gently. "Just not you."

"And I've had this worry—" I break off again, wondering if someone spiked the cider with truth serum and if there's a limit to just how many of my issues I'll spill to this poor woman tonight. "I'm in a long-distance relationship with someone really wonderful." Maybe it's a little personal to tell her about Neil, but I nearly started crying in her house, and writing is nothing if not personal. "He's at school in New York. Romance has always been the thing I want to read most. It's all I've ever wanted to write. And then as soon as I started dating someone I truly, deeply loved… it all dried up. Like, I don't know, I'm putting too much pressure on the writing to reflect that love."

Miranda considers this for a while as she reaches for a piece of white-cheddar popcorn. "Hmm."

"So I'm just wondering… is there something wrong with me that I can't write when I'm happy? Do I need to be in pain to be creative?" With a humorless laugh, I hold up my hands. "Are all writers tortured geniuses—not that I'm anything remotely close to a genius, I swear I don't think quite that highly of myself—and that's the secret? That I have to be tortured if I want to make anything worthwhile?"

"Wow. I'm not quite sure where to start." She tucks a lock of hair behind one ear, exposing a tiny book-shaped earring. If I weren't so distraught, I'd ask where she got it. "First of all, I want to give you an adamant no that you don't have to be unhappy in order to create art. That's bullshit. Maybe there is something of a history of tortured geniuses, people in pain making beautiful things. Maybe we as a culture have even romanticized it."

I nod, thinking about how Neil, with his love of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, would know all about that.

"Every writer is different, of course. Are all writers perfectly well-adjusted human beings? Well, no. None of us are. But that doesn't mean we're all miserable, either. I wrote Thursday at Dawn when I was going through a rough patch, and it's a very sad book. Then I wrote Helvetica when everything started to stabilize—and that's the one you and I like the most. And I'm inclined to believe we're right—I think it's the better book. I was happier, I was healthier, I was taking care of myself, and I think it shows," she says, and I wonder how that must feel for her rough-patch book to be the one beloved by critics. Complicated, I imagine. "Inspiration takes form in many different ways. Sometimes even I don't understand it, but I've grown to trust the process."

"What is it, then?" I ask. "Why am I so stuck? Why I am incapable of getting a decent grade on one of these assignments?"

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize that's part of what I've been craving: the validation, the way it feels to see an A circled in red on top of a paper.

"Rowan. You should know by now that the assignments aren't graded. Not on any kind of scale that you're used to, at least."

"But—but all the red," I say. "You always scribble all over them. I feel like that wouldn't be the case if I were actually getting an A."

"I write that much on everyone's assignments," she says. "There's a reason I emphasize participation in my class, and that can mean any number of things. I find that freshmen sometimes have a hard time letting go of perfection, this notion that whatever they put on the page needs to be instantly brilliant. Especially the ones who were high achievers in high school. There might be a bit of academic burnout there, and the last thing I want to do is add more stress."

"Okay, fine," I say. "But it doesn't change the fact that everything I write comes out like absolute shit."

Miranda's voice is warm as ever but with a new firmness. "Nah," she says. "I would love to see you write absolute shit, but you're not there yet."

I half laugh at this. "Are you making fun of me?"

She shakes her head. "It's advice I've been given at a few stages of my own career. Sometimes we can get so in our heads that we think everything needs to be beautiful the moment it hits the page. I'll build up a book for so long that once I start writing, I'm furious with myself that it doesn't match the vision I have in my head."

"Yes," I say, nodding vigorously. "That's exactly it. How do I get it to match that vision?"

"You don't." She says it flatly. Of all the encouraging things I thought she might say, I definitely never thought she'd agree with me. "You embrace the absolute shit. That's why I do the freewrites. To get all of you out of your heads, to realize that writing is revising. Writing is rewriting. Nothing comes out beautifully the first time, except for maybe a handful of very unusual writers. Who we hate, naturally."

"Naturally."

"Most of the students in my classes are used to being told by their teachers that they're good writers. They're used to getting top grades. And I'm not here to drag you down or tank your GPA, but I want you to think about writing differently than you have in the past. You might have that compounded because of your relationship—the fact that you're in love, so you should be able to write about love."

"Write what you know," I mutter.

"But that's so much pressure," she says. "Not to mention most of you are going through considerable emotional upheaval—leaving behind your homes, your safety, your comfort. Starting over in a new place."

It would be so easy for her to sound patronizing, and yet all I feel is the deep compassion she has for teaching, for her students. Because that's undeniably part of it, the onslaught of newness, ever-shifting beneath my feet.

"So how are we ever supposed to write something good?"

"Let go of it," she says, "by doing the exact opposite. I'd rather read bad writing that's full of heart than good writing that's devoid of emotion." And then she gives me a smile as she pats her chest. "Because if it has that heart, how bad can it really be?"

I'm still struggling to wrap my mind around this. Then again, nothing I've tried so far has worked, so maybe it's not the most ridiculous idea.

I let out a deep breath, trying to relax into it.

"Write badly, Rowan," she urges, holding out a bowl for me to take a handful of chips. "Give yourself permission."

I go back out into the living room for the final freewrite, where Kait gives me a cheery smile and asks where I wandered off to.

"Bathroom," I tell her.

And even though I don't write another word the rest of the night, somewhere deep in my bones, I sense myself start to change.

It doesn't happen right away, the writing badly.

But a couple nights later, Paulina's out and Kait's with Leilani and I'm caught up on all my reading. Gingerly, as though it's a small animal I might spook if I go too fast, I reach for my laptop.

Give yourself permission.

So I do.

I write the worst trash I've ever written. Objectively speaking—this time, I'm not being hard on myself.

It's a surprise, how bizarrely fun it is, to let myself go like this. My writing has always been so restrained, so calculated, but when I switch off my inner editor, let the words trip into each other, it's a mess—a little sandbox of words I've created to play with.

I put all my heart into that terrible piece of writing. There's a turn of phrase I like here and there, but as a whole, it's not very good at all. I repeat words, I end sentences with prepositions, I use too many question marks and exclamation points. It's ugly and unpolished and downright bad.

And when I finish, I'm so fucking proud of it.