18
FIVE DAYS LATER, I’m lying in bed in my dressing gown on a Friday morning, watching Real Housewives and dropping biscuit crumbs throughout my bed with a cup of coffee very precariously balanced next to me. Hayley and Luke are on their honeymoon, and I am alone in the house. I used to quite like being alone in Joel’s and my apartment because it was a small and cosy one bedroom, and it felt like the right-size space to be alone in. I don’t feel this way at Hayley and Luke’s house. It’s too big and echoey without them. I feel like part of the household when they’re here, but an imposter when they’re not, moving through rooms filled with appliances and furniture owned by someone else.
I’ve taken a sick day from work, which is slightly pathetic, but I dragged myself through most of the week and I decided I could not face my boss, Marco, and his annoying corporate speak (‘Come on team, let’s get some blue-sky thinking going!’) and micromanaging (‘Anna, I just wanted to go over that email again before you send it’) and insistence of telling me about his weekend plans in detail (‘I’ll probably do the early F45 class this Sunday’). When he heard about me publishing a book, he didn’t ask me a single question about it, but he did tell me about his idea for a novel—an epic story of one man’s journey of self-realisation while trekking through Nepal—that he’d just never had time to write. I now live in fear of him sending me the first chapter for feedback.
The other reason for my sick day is that I need more time to recover from the news of Joel and his impending baby. Reality TV and endless snacks have helped. And I have scrolled through Mac’s IMDb page in detail, and illegally downloaded an episode of a crime procedural called Perfect Murders that I can’t find on any streamer, in order to watch the seven minutes he appears on screen as a suspect. I have also spent a not-insignificant amount of time on the subreddit for Arcadia Rising , and read every post about the character Mac played.
When I get tired of deep-diving on Mac’s life, I turn to my own. I read all the Goodreads reviews for The Hike (ranging from ‘brilliant, exquisitely funny’ to ‘I am embarrassed I read this, it might be one of the worst books I’ve ever read’) and google my name in case my google alert is somehow broken and I missed some amazing write-up of my book in a national newspaper calling me a rising star of the Australian book world, the next Liane Moriarty. (I haven’t.)
I am in the post-release slump, which another author did kindly warn me about. For up to six weeks after your book comes out, you’re still in the campaign zone. You have a new release! You have podcast interviews, possible reviews coming in, you’re still stocked in bookshops, in fact your book is often face out on the shelves or on the new-releases table, you’re in catalogues, you might have events. After a month, things get quiet. The next month’s new books are out, you’re bumped from the new-releases tables. You’re just a measly spine in the bookcase now. After six weeks, it’s over. Deathly silence. Oh. That’s it. Lifelong dream done and dusted.
Something about this thought sends a cold shiver down my spine. What am I doing ? This is my dream. Writing is my dream. And I’m lying here rotting in my unwashed sheets thinking about my ex-boyfriend. Get up and start writing . Now. This instant. The mourning period for the Joel news is over.
I shower, wash my hair and shave everything from my toes to my upper lip, and put on my best leggings and Hayley’s expensive anti-ageing retinol moisturiser. I sit at my desk, turn on my internet blocker to protect me from every distracting website on my laptop, turn my phone to aeroplane mode, and force myself to write. For the rest of the day, no distractions, no stopping, no excuses. No bloody wallowing. Minimum two thousand words. It doesn’t matter if they’re bad.
I flick through the notes in my phone, looking for inspiration. There it is. The words I wrote down the night before the wedding. Mac’s line. It makes me think of two characters who want to be together but can’t, involved in some kind of high-stakes situation, almost kissing but interrupted, and then in a pivotal scene, when the tension has become too much, maybe they’re on the run and hiding together somewhere, the man whispers in her ear let me show you what I was going to do before .
Three hours later, I have a little seed of an idea about two con-artists falling in love while working a job together, but never quite being able to trust each other, never knowing if the other is double-crossing them. The title comes to me: The Scam . It’s complicated, and will be tricky to write. Two unreliable narrators, two points of view. That’s not easy to pull off. But it could be fun. This is the kind of book it would be sensible to plan and plot out beforehand. It is almost required. But now I have started putting words on the page, teasing out their voices, I can feel the characters in my head, I can see the banter and scenes between them, and I need to write before I lose the feeling, the taste of them, the spark.
The next morning I get up early, buy a whiteboard from Officeworks, along with multiple packets of Post-it notes, and I write five thousand words. I start plotting things out on the whiteboard. There are notes, and boxes, and arrows. It looks official, impressive. I take a photo, to post on social media when the book comes out, look, look at my creative process, look at how this masterpiece was created.
When I turn my phone back on that night, I have a message from an unknown number.
Hi Anna, it’s Patrick. From the wedding. I just thought I’d reach out and see if you wanted to catch up some time. x
I stare at the message. The kiss at the end! I do want to catch up. He’s interested! My fate has arrived. Thank you, universe. I will reply. Soon. Just not right now. Not today. Right now I need to keep writing. I need to keep my head in the book. The idea feels so new, so fragile still, I have to hold on to it, I have to stay in the bubble. It needs all my attention to grow.
I’m going to call my main character Stevie, I decide. I am going to give her my precious baby name, I am going to stop holding on to it as if I can conjure a future through a name. Stevie belongs to the book now. I belong to the work.