Chapter 7 Sad Kate Winslet
Sad Kate Winslet
Noah
Noah
Can you PLEASE call Mom back?
Noah
She’s blowing me up because she hasn’t been able to get a hold of you.
I talked to her literally two days ago?
I’m trying to write, behind on deadline.
Will call her later.
Oct 23 5:16 PM
Noah
I think she’s “concerned”
Noah
Her daughter was recently part of the news cycle.
Noah
Speaking of …
Trying to write, Noah.
Noah
“How many words do you have now?”
Anna’s voice is tinny in Sage’s headphones. Her agent takes a sip of her tea, her face utterly calm and slightly pixelated on the computer screen.
“Twenty-five thousand,” Sage says as she taps her pen against her thigh, her feet tucked beneath her on the couch. Twenty-five thousand, and she needs at least a hundred thousand more. “Only about a third of them are good, though.”
She’s sitting in her tiny living room, her computer set on the scratched coffee table next to the second mug of coffee she’s drained.
It’s early enough that the sun is still a deep orange as it starts filtering through the windows to her left, casting shadows across her already tired face.
The sweats and messy topknot don’t help her look any more put together, but she knew as soon as she asked Anna to have a video call that it would be useless to try to hide her general state of disarray from her agent.
“Which part is proving difficult?” Anna asks.
Sage scrubs a hand down her face. “All of it. I just … I can’t get any words out.
It’s like … I think I have an idea, but then nothing actually comes out on the page.
Even when I try to let it just be bad, the words still won’t come.
It’s like I’ve forgotten how to write.” She hates the way her voice tightens with anxiety, but it’s been two and a half weeks since she got back to LA, and in that time, she’s written a record low of two thousand words.
Logically, Sage knows writer’s block is a very real thing.
She knows this isn’t about her being lazy, or not wanting to work.
She would probably work herself into an early grave if she didn’t have friends like Emerson and Margot to remind her every once in a while that there are things outside of getting a gold star that no one can see.
She’s still trying to accept that.
The point is … she knows that whatever is happening in her head isn’t fake, or some silly excuse she’s making to sit on her couch and do nothing.
She went down a rabbit hole on writer’s block when she first hit this wall before the Con.
She’s read articles and Reddit threads and blog posts about how to cure it.
She’s gone to write at Urth Caffé on Melrose, her favorite coffee shop, for a change of scenery, has sought out random writing prompts to get the juices flowing, has tried starting from the end.
Margot even came last week with a special water filter for Sage’s sink (It’ll help you stay hydrated and flush out toxins, S!).
Nothing’s worked. And she needs something to work, so help her god, because she doesn’t have time to break down like this.
Not with her publisher making grand plans for a publication deadline she’s not even sure she can meet, not with her readers anxiously awaiting the sequel, not with booksellers already sending emails about marketing and launch plans and transparent requests just to triple check the book is still coming out next fall.
Sage doesn’t know who she is when she doesn’t have something to strive for. Now isn’t the best time to find out.
“I don’t know what to do,” she admits quietly. A siren wails in the background, and Sage licks her chapped lips. She reaches for her mug before remembering she drained it down to the dregs.
Anna’s mouth twists in contemplation. “Is there something on your mind that’s distracting you?”
The question is thick with double meaning, and it has Sage rubbing at her eyes again, sleeves of her UCLA sweatshirt pulled over her hands. She cringes at the green juice stain on the cuff.
“No,” she sighs, voice thick with exhaustion.
She can’t sleep when her brain gets stuck like this.
It tries to solve problems while she dozes, but really, it just circles and circles, creating new snags in her dreams until she tosses and turns and wakes up, only to repeat the cycle all over again for the six hours she lays in bed.
Lately, her mind has taken to trying to plot her sequel in her sleep. Sometimes, it feels like Cleo is haunting her—like she’s lost in the cliff-hanger Sage left her in at the end of book one and is torturing Sage for it gleefully.
“The chatter has mostly died down ever since Theo posted his statement,” Sage adds, because Sage isn’t a fool and she knows what her agent really wants to know is if she’s still hung up on the mess from a few weeks ago.
Bitterness floods her mouth, and she’s not sure if it’s at the mere mention of Theo’s name or the realization that he was right:
People would—and did—get bored.
“And there aren’t other distractions?”
Sage shifts, untucking her legs only to bring one up under the other. “What are you getting at?”
She hasn’t told anyone aside from Emerson and Margot about what really happened between her and Theo in the greenroom.
“I’m just saying you had a bit of a bump,” Anna says cryptically. “It’s natural for that to affect you.”
“I was stuck on this book before Comic Con.” Some of her frustration seeps into her tone. She pushes her sleeves up to her elbows.
Suddenly, her sweatshirt feels suffocating. She wants to tear it off.
“I just wish I could fucking write,” she grits out.
“Maybe you need a break.”
“I don’t have time for a break. My draft is due in January, Anna. It’s November first.” Obviously, Anna knows this, but Sage isn’t above reminding her.
“You don’t have time to not have the time to take care of yourself,” Anna corrects her. It’s a different kind of Anna-ism, still blunt and accompanied with a scan of Sage’s sloppy appearance, but it’s also warm and coated in something maternal. “Maybe you need a change of scenery?”
Sage lets out a strained laugh. “I was in New York City almost three weeks ago.”
Anna waves her off. “You know what I mean. Can you go somewhere? Unplug for a bit, get inspired again?”
Sage’s forefinger finds the ragged cuticle on her thumb and starts to pick. “I guess I could. I have some money set aside.”
She doesn’t bother to mention that time for such a thing is dwindling.
She’s due home in a few weeks for Thanksgiving, and she guesses technically that’s a change of scenery, but Chicago won’t exactly be mind-clearing or restorative.
Her parents’ neighborhood does a block party for the holiday.
The thought of making small talk with their neighbors—neighbors who knew her in diapers but haven’t seen her since last Christmas—sort of makes Sage want to cry, especially because Noah won’t be there to deflect attention away from her this year.
They’re a team. Even if … even if it seems like lately, they’ve been on different frequencies.
She’s never felt the two years of age difference between them. But now, Noah and Cecelia have been trying to conceive for the last year, and Sage is single and unsure if she even wants kids, and she’s in a career he doesn’t fully understand and …
It’s different.
They never used to have to try this hard.
“I’ll think on it,” she finally says, because Anna has another meeting and she’s taken up enough of her agent’s time with her mini meltdown. She signs off with promises to keep Anna updated and doesn’t bother keeping her computer open after the Zoom meeting ends.
Sage leans her head back against the couch cushions and stares at the water stain on her ceiling.
Her landlord promised to paint over it a year ago after ensuring there wasn’t any lasting damage from when the unit above her flooded, but she’s started to come to terms with it being a fixture of her home, much like her bedroom window that never quite closes.
“You could just paint it yourself,” Noah had said the last time he’d visited. “You work from home now.”
Sage didn’t know how to explain to her brother—composed and steady as he always was—that she knew she could do it, but Nights was about to come out and adding one more thing to her to-do list, even a task that would take her less than an hour, would render her completely useless for all the things she had to do immediately.
Once her brain decided it had enough to juggle, it was enough, and piling on just kept Sage frozen and unable to move.
It didn’t always stop her from adding more, especially if she was intent on distracting herself from things she didn’t want to think about, but she was trying to do better.
Nights was something she didn’t want to fuck up. It was too important to get in her own way, to sabotage herself in the ways she knew she could. And yet here she was, unable to get out of her own way, anyway.
Sage lets out an aggravated groan and forces herself from the couch, grabbing her empty mug and her phone and heading to the kitchenette.
It’s her favorite part of her apartment, with its sky-blue walls and checkered tile and natural light from the large windows over her sink.
She pours herself another cup of coffee from the pot before shoving the mug in the microwave and reheating it.
That anxiety curling in her gut has settled a bit after having talked with Anna, if only because it felt like some form of professional confession, but she still doesn’t have any answers. She needs a plan, a checklist, something that puts her back in control.
Sage flips her phone in her hand, an unread text from Emerson flashing on the screen. She and Margot have been hell-bent on filling her weekends with activities, everything from clubs to art shows to dinners, and Sage knows exactly what they’re trying to do:
Get her out of her head.