Chapter 2 – Willa
TWO
WILLA
“That’s it. I’m done. Washed up. My career is over.
” I tear another sheet of paper from the notebook I have been doodling words and thoughts on, crumple it, and throw it at the wall.
It circles the edge of the basket before falling to the ground.
It feels like the perfect metaphor for how I feel right now: circling, spiraling, and ultimately creating a mess.
I settle deep into the chair, tipping my head back, and groan at the ceiling before running a hand roughly over my face.
If Jackie were here, she’d give me shit for it, telling me I’m going to get wrinkles, but what do wrinkles matter if my career is over and I’m never going to record another album?
Am I being dramatic? Maybe.
But I didn’t get this far by being sensible.
“Okay, I wouldn’t go that far,” Adam says with a laugh and a shake of his head. “You’re just…scattered.”
That’s the nice way to put the way I’m jumping from outlined track to outlined track, trying to cling on to some tiny bit of inspiration to get past this block and failing each and every time. I sigh, sitting up and frowning at him on the screen of my computer.
“I just…I don’t know what to write. Nothing feels right.
It all feels stupid and superficial.” Creative block is a problem I’ve never run into before.
Anytime I’ve ever been the slightest bit stuck, I’ve been able to pull inspiration from movies, art, or books to find the stories I wanted to tell in songs, even if they weren’t my own.
Though I tell fans all of my songs are written from personal experience, from my own struggles and wins in my quest to find true love, my love life is purely nonexistent.
“Everything I write sucks. I’m totally fucked.
This is it, isn’t it? My career is over, and I’ve hit my peak, and I’m now destined for a life of C-list television theme songs. ”
“It doesn’t suck,” Adam says in his calm tone. I glare at him, and the edge of his lips tips up. “It’s just very… sad?”
“Which is a problem.” Running a hand over my face, I take a deep breath, trying to quell the panic building in my chest. I close my eyes, counting my breaths before I explain.
“My last album was sad. My last album was my woman-scorned breakup album. This one is supposed to be a love album,” I remind him, something he is well aware of since he wrote what will become the lead single.
In December, Adam, an incredibly talented songwriter, brought me a song he believed would be perfect for me.
I immediately fell in love with it. Are You Mine?
is all romance, all the butterflies of having a crush, of being unsure, of falling in love, and realizing they feel the same.
When I heard Are You Mine?, I knew I needed it on my next album.
I’m known well for writing most of my own songs, so while it’s the perfect start, the perfect song to set the tone for the album, I need to write the rest of the songs myself.
At first, I was on tour, and when I sat down to write in my limited free time and found no inspiration, I figured it was because I was too busy.
I was running from interview to meeting to practice to meet-and-greet to performance, each day in a new place, a new city.
I didn’t pay it much mind, even though in the past I’d always been able to write, no matter where I was.
Instead, I made a vision board, a spread of words and photos and colors and even textures to inspire me, which is now hanging over my computer in my music room.
As I stare at it, once again, I know it’s perfect, the exact vision I have for the album: a light, airy, love ballad-filled album about being afraid of love, finding it, and then being desperate to keep it.
A color palette of pastel pinks and purples and blues and greens, a clipping of hands being held, a still of a couple passionately kissing.
A couple of intimate snaps of a hand on a thigh, fingers indenting skin, of teeth on a lip.
Infatuation and love and attraction and need. That’s the vibe for this album. Now it just needs to get written.
But I’ve been home now for two weeks and…nothing.
Not a song, not a lyric, not even a usable melody has come to me.
Yesterday, I asked Adam if he could hop on a coworking call with me for a couple of hours to see if he could help shake some inspiration loose, but the call is now going on three hours, and I have nothing to show for it, other than a pile of crumpled-up papers and the anxiety stirring in my bones.
“I don’t get it. I’m doing everything I normally do.
I’m working out, I’m reading, I’m going through old notes.
I’m meditating and journaling and spending at least three hours a day trying to write, but I’ve got nothing to show for it.
” He looks at me assessingly, head tipping to the side just a hair before he speaks with a gentleness I don’t expect from him.
“Maybe that’s your problem. You’re trying too hard. You’re too structured. Maybe you need to change up your routine.”
Panic shoots through me at the mere suggestion.
“My routines are what help me write,” I murmur, protective of the routines I’ve created. I like the predictability of a routine.
Routines are familiar.
Routines feel safe.
Routines help me stay in my groove.
Routines mean I am in control.
“Normally,” Adam says, lifting a shoulder in a halfhearted gesture.
“But maybe that’s changed. Maybe you need a change.
” I scrunch up my nose, trying to push down how the mere idea of change unsettles me, and a chuckle fills the room.
“I get it. I’ve been there, Will. Trust me.
I was going on six months of no writing with my last block.
” My head snaps up, giving him wide eyes.
“Six months?” He nods, and I sit back, floored. Writing is as natural to Adam as it is to me. He, Riggins, and Stella Greene are the only people I’ve ever been able to write with, since they have the same consuming need to get words on paper as I do. “What did you do?”
“I panicked, for one. Tried to write even more, wasted time, paper, and energy I didn’t have.
I stressed enough to burn a hole in my stomach, I’m sure.
Then I tried moving from LA to New York.
Tried using a typewriter. I ran a fuck-ton.
Watched movies, listened to music, and read books.
Tried to…I don’t know. Find myself? I cut myself off from everyone and everything. ”
I think about the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on craft supplies, about the vision board I made, about the fancy notebooks that I’ve bought, thinking they might help, and the extra Pilates classes I added to my routine.
“But then I moved to Holly Ridge.” He shrugs when I raise an eyebrow at him. “It was a random, spur-of-the-moment decision, but the best one I ever made. Maybe that’s what you need.”
“To move to a small town on a whim and fall in love? I’m sure Jackie and Leo would just love that,” I say. He rolls his eyes through the screen and shakes his head.
“No, I don’t think you need to up and leave everything you know. But maybe a change of scenery would help.”
“I just came off a world tour,” I grumble, drawing hearts in the margins of a piece of paper.
“And I couldn’t write while I was there.
Not sure how a change of scenery would help.
” I know I’m being stubborn, and I know that he’s just trying to help, and I’m grateful when he isn’t irritated or offended by my arguments. Instead, he just shrugs knowingly.
“You may have been somewhere else physically, but at the end of the day, it was the same old, same old. Maybe change of scenery was the wrong word—You need a change of pace. Maybe you need to… I don’t know.
Disappear. Go somewhere new and just be…
you. Not Willa Stone, the pop star. Willa Stone, the person.
” That knot in my stomach grows, swirling inward until I feel suffocated by it.
The truth is, I have no idea who I am without my external personality, without the version the world knows. I’ve been here for so long, grown into her, that I don’t actually think there is a different version of myself hiding away.
But that’s embarrassing to admit, to tell someone that there is no deeper version of yourself than the superficial one you’ve created to please those around you.
So, instead, I give him the logical answer.
“I don’t think there’s anywhere I can hide without having to be on all the time.”
“You can in Holly Ridge,” he says, with a small smile.
“The Atlas Oaks guys were here not long ago; no one bothered them.” I take in the sincerity in his voice, but don’t speak.
“If you ever want to come, get away for a bit, I’ve got a guest room you’re more than welcome to.
It’s not luxury, but it’s comfy, and Wren makes great cookies.
” His voice softens when he mentions his girlfriend, the muse for Are You Mine?
, and I smile at that, so happy my friend has this… has found this.
Simultaneously, something ugly twists in my chest, something I recognize as jealousy, and I hate it. In an effort not to dwell on it, I nod. “I’ll let you know. Maybe I’ll come for a day, and we can write together in person. Maybe that will help knock this block out.”
“Come for a while. A weekend or a week. You’d love it here.
Wren’s about to be off for the summer, and we have a couple of travel plans, but nothing crazy, so we’ll be around.
She would love to have you here. Though there would be a requisite visit to her niece.
” I never thought I’d see this, grumpy Adam Porter smiling and joking about this extended family of his, but it’s clear before me.
Adam went to Holly Ridge, creatively blocked and emotionally cut off, and the journey transformed him. Even though I know it’s impossible, I can’t help but wonder if I could find the same.
“Hey, babe, I’m gonna go to the store, is there anything—” a pretty brunette says, walking on screen with her head down, a notebook in her hands.
She stops mid-sentence, looks up, and gasps, her face going pink.
“Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to interrupt.
I’ll just—” She starts to stammer and back up, but I shake my head.
“No, no, you’re fine!” I say with a wave, secretly relieved for the interruption.
I didn’t want to sit with my thoughts or Adam’s offer of a getaway much longer.
“I was just whining to Adam. It’s good to see you!
” She comes closer, and Adam wraps an arm around her waist, tugging her down into his lap, and again, I feel that jealousy, guilt coming in on its heels.
“You too! How’s it feel to have some time off?” Wren asks with a friendly smile.
“I was just telling her she should come here for a bit over the summer. She’s creatively blocked, and I think she needs to change things up.”
“Well, Holly Ridge is the best little town in the whole world. We’d love to host you! Being here fixed Adam’s block right up.”
I grin at them, but before I can say anything else, though, my phone beeps and a message from Jackie lights up my screen.
Jackie
The meeting has been moved up by thirty minutes. Okay?
I sigh, tap out a response in the affirmative, and sit up.
“That’s Jackie—my meeting was moved up, and I gotta go get ready.
” I have at least an hour before I have to leave the house, but I’ll need that much time to get the camera ready for the paparazzi who will inevitably be waiting outside to catch a shot of me. Adam nods, then gives me a stern look.
“We’ll chat soon. Be easy on yourself, Willa. You can’t force the muse.” I give him a tight smile, biting back the instinctive response of reminding him that my label doesn’t really care if my muse is taking its sweet time or not. “And think about coming to Holly Ridge.”
“Will do,” I say with a smile before wishing the couple goodbye and then signing off. Then, with one last look around my mess of an office, I sigh, do a quick cleanup, and move on with my getting-ready routine while mentally shelving my worries about my writer’s block.
It’s time to turn on Willa Stone, the pop star, and she never worries about anything. Why would she when she has everything she ever wanted?