Chapter 3 The Writing Class #6
I don’t mean for it to sound like an invitation to leave, but that’s how Weston takes it. I can tell by the flinch of his eyes, the way he spears a hand through his hair and heads for the porch steps.
“Guess I’ll see you later, then.”
“Wes.”
He pauses on the second step, and I walk over to meet him—to press a soft kiss to his lips.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight about this… I just promised Grayson I’d read it.”
“I understand,” he says, his voice soft and his eyes full of earnest sweetness. “I just want you to be… cautious. Suspicious. See, you’re teaching me how to find the right word.”
I frown. “Suspicious of what?”
Weston’s gaze roams over my face, and he smiles sadly, like he could explain it a hundred different ways and I still wouldn’t understand. “You’re beautiful, Tessa. You’re brilliant and funny and interesting and sweet… You haven’t been around a lot of guys. You don’t know how they… look at you.”
“Wes, Grayson’s not like that.”
“All men are like that,” he corrects, pretty sure of himself for someone who’s never properly met Grayson. “Trust me, I know. He chose you as his critique partner for a reason.”
“He knows I have a boyfriend.”
“Doesn’t matter. If you’d had a boyfriend when I met you, that wouldn’t have stopped me from wanting you.
Wouldn’t have stopped me from trying to get you.
I would’ve moved heaven and earth to be your man.
” He catches my hand in his and gives it a quick squeeze, leaning in to press another kiss to my lips. “Just be on your guard, okay?”
I’m still flustered after Weston’s truck backs out of the driveway and heads down the street. His warning lingers in my mind like a pebble in my shoe—just sharp enough to be a bother. It’s not that he mistrusts Grayson’s intentions towards me. It’s that Weston mistrusts me, alone with Grayson.
“Jane Austen.”
“Stephen King.”
“J. K. Rowling.”
“Tolkien… duh.”
Grayson points at me, and all heads swivel in my direction.
“Uh, Emily Dickinson,” I say quietly.
There are a few hums and nods of agreement around our table, which is tucked away in the back corner of the coffee shop and crowded with laptops, notebooks, and cappuccinos.
It’s unexpectedly delightful to be a part of this sacred gathering of writers.
On my way here, I was afraid I might feel like an outsider—stuck on the fringe, unable to contribute to the conversation.
But Grayson met me at the door with a bright smile and pulled out a chair right beside his near the center of the table.
I made sure to put an appropriate amount of space between us.
Though laptops were flung open and drinks were ordered, the brainstorming has yet to begin—and Shoshanna treats the proceedings with the utmost respect, proving that this part of the meeting is perhaps more important than the actual agenda.
We’ve been going around the table, naming the authors who first inspired us to become writers. I’m the only one who’s chosen a poet, which makes me feel like the odd woman out, until Grayson chimes in, “Mine is John Keats.”
Shoshanna groans and thuds back in her chair. “Oh, come on—”
“What’s wrong with Keats?”
She makes a show of looking at her wrist, which has no watch on it. “We don’t have time to go over all the reasons.”
Her objection makes the whole table erupt in opinions—some in favor of Keats, others against him. Grayson laughs and puts his hands up, but the twinkle in his eye tells me he intended to start a conflict with this controversial opinion.
“I want to hear what Tessa thinks,” he says, silencing the gabble like a judge in a noisy courtroom. My cheeks heat up as he turns to put the spotlight on me again. “Since it sounds like you’re the only one who reads poetry around here.”
Shoshanna objects to that, but Grayson puts up one finger to halt the traffic for my opinion.
“I, uh… haven’t read a ton of Keats. I like his letters more than his poems, honestly.”
Grayson frowns, tilting his head to the side. “His letters?”
I nod. “When he was in a relationship with Fanny Brawne, he wrote her love letters when they couldn’t be together.
Actually, the poem ‘Bright Star’ was written about her.
And there’s a line from one of his letters—I can’t remember the exact words, but it goes something like…
” I close my eyes because I know I’ll fumble if I can see everyone watching me.
“‘I wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer days. Three days with you I could fill with more joy than fifty common years could contain.’”
When I open my eyes, Grayson is looking at me with a soft, mesmerized expression, like I just melted him with that line of Keats. Weston’s warning from yesterday comes rearing up in my mind.
You don’t know how guys look at you.
Is this the look he was talking about? The one that singles me out, like I’m the only girl sitting at this table?
I break eye contact with Grayson, drying my damp palms on my jeans. “So, yeah, I almost wonder if Keats was more poetic when he wasn’t trying to be poetic.”
This idea sparks a new debate about the use of metaphors and similes in writing—when it should be done, when it is overdone, etc.
The artistic rhetoric soon becomes too dizzying for me to keep up with, but I enjoy listening.
Surrounding myself with this sort of conversation makes me feel like a real writer.
And yet, that twinge of self-doubt resurrects itself every time I ask someone to explain a literary term or introduce me to a famous author I’ve never heard of.
I feel like I belong here, but at the same time… I don’t belong.
Eventually, all of us Inklings descend into our private worlds of brainstorming—speaking only to our designated critique partners for ideas, and occasionally putting the whole group to a vote on the more complex decision-making.
I tell Grayson what I thought of his first chapter, and watch over his shoulder as he reworks sentences based on my opinions. I compiled a list of constructive feedback last night, with an 80:20 ratio of positive to critical thoughts.
“You didn’t like the opening line?” he asks, quirking one eyebrow over the rim of his square glasses.
“Well, it’s not that I didn’t like it—I mean, it was good.
You just got a bit wordy with all the things it wasn’t before finally leading up to the scene with Peter on the bridge.
What if you cut out that whole first paragraph and began with, ‘You can learn a lot about a man by watching the way he attempts to kill himself… For Peter Hunsecker, it was a bridge.’”
Grayson nods slowly, looking at the opening line in a new light. He highlights all the wordy parts and, with one click, deletes them.
“Genius.” He casts me a grin. “I think you might be my muse, Tessa.”
I sputter an appalled scoff and roll my eyes. “I doubt that very much. Your writing is really good—I like it. And that’s saying a lot because I would normally never read this type of book.”
Grayson laughs and pops open a different Word document minimized on his screen. My first chapter. When I see it, my heart flops. He hasn’t given me any feedback so far; he just sent an email late last night that simply read, I finished yours. Wow.
But I couldn’t tell if that was a good wow or a “wow, your writing is atrocious” kind of wow.
Now his critiques are inescapable as he sits beside me and highlights the first few paragraphs of my chapter.
“This,” he says, nodding to the screen, “was absolutely brilliant.”
I smile, my heart swelling. “Really?”
“Yeah. I was hooked right away. Couldn’t put it down.”
“Oh my gosh, seriously?”
Grayson laughs. “Don’t sound so surprised. You’re a very talented writer, Tessa.”
A self-conscious blush warms my cheeks, and I shrug modestly. “I’m… glad you liked it. At first, I was going to start with Mabel’s point of view, but I decided to change it to begin with Lieutenant Barnes’s.”
“You wrote it so well, too,” Grayson says. “I was especially impressed by the medical stuff. I can tell you really did your research.”
That makes me smile to myself. I don’t know if talking to my boyfriend while cuddling on the couch counts as research, but if it does, I’m pretty sure “research” is my favorite part of the writing process.
“I did have an idea, though.”
I glance up at him, my confidence flickering. “Yeah?”
“Well, this is a brainstorm session, after all. And feel free to tell me to go pound sand—but I was thinking as I read it… what if Mabel and the lieutenant already knew each other? What if they were in love before the war even started, and she thinks they can just pick up where they left off, but Barnes feels like he’s not enough for her now? ”
The idea sparks new possibilities in my mind. “That’s… an interesting thought.”
“And what if—I know you’re not going to like this one.” Grayson smirks, folding his hands over his laptop in a scholarly fashion. “What if Barnes is actually dying from his wounds, and Mabel doesn’t find out the reason why until it’s too late—”
“No, no. Nobody’s dying. This is a romance. It’s going to have a happy ending.”
Grayson chuckles at my adamancy.
“And speaking of happy endings,” I add, “I think I figured out a way for your book to have one—”
“Oh God, no.” He tips his head back defiantly. “Don’t say you want the psychiatrist to live. He needs to die. It’s part of the overarching symbolism.”
“Yes, I know, but what if… the patient is the one who ends up saving his life? Peter. And you could still have that juxtaposition of the negative and positive arc, but it would be even juicier because if Peter had jumped off the bridge at the beginning of the story, he wouldn’t have been alive to save the psychiatrist.”
“But the psychiatrist wouldn’t have become suicidal if it weren’t for Peter.”
I shrug. “Even more reason for Peter to save his life.”