Tonight, our writing teacher dropped a bomb on us.
“Your short stories should be pretty close to finished by now,” he began. “So now we’re going to turn them into novels.”
My first thought? My short story is nowhere near finished. Second? We only have four classes left. It took me six to write a rough draft of a short story. How the heck am I supposed to write a novel? Plus, I’m moving in a little over a week, and I’ve barely packed. And I’m planning a wedding! Needless to say, I was starting to panic.
“Obviously, you won’t be able to finish an entire novel in the time we have left,” Peter continued. “But the idea is, I want to get you thinking bigger. And obviously, try to sell all of you who are here because of a coupon deal to try our intensive novel-writing workshop.”
I laughed and breathed a sigh of relief. When class was over, James and I decided to go out for a drink.
“What are you doing Saturday night?” he asked.
“Packing. Wedding planning. Having a stress-induced nervous breakdown. Why do you ask?”
“I’m having a birthday party. You and Ben should stop by if you want to get out for a while.”
“That sounds fun! Want to send me the details over email or Facebook?”
“I’m not on Facebook. Give me your email address.”
“You’re not on Facebook?” I asked incredulously.
James sighed. “No. I’m not.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to see all my ex-girlfriends’ wedding photos, and listen to people I didn’t like in high school spew out ugly political rhetoric.”
“Okay, I’m not going to lie and say that I haven’t hidden like 20 people from high school from my feed. But James, even my mom is on Facebook. You’re kind of the equivalent of someone who didn’t have TV 10 years ago.”
“I’m okay with that,” he said, in a tone that let me know that Mr. Stubborn would not be swayed.
“So tell me something,” he said, swirling what was left of his beer around in his pint glass. “Do you have a secret blog? Like the girl in your story?”
I paused. "Yes. I do.”
It felt kind of exhilarating to admit it.
“Does Ben know about it?”
“No.”
“Interesting.”
After that, conversation turned toward how we were going to turn our short stories into novels. After a couple of beers, we called it a night and went our separate ways. I called Ben as I walked.
“Hey,” I said when he answered. “James is having a birthday party Saturday night. Wanna go?”
“James?” he asked. “Lori’s boyfriend?”
“No! Not that James. James from my writing class.”
“Oh. Phew. Yeah, I’m down with that. Wanna come over?”
“I have to get some packing done,” I said. “I’m on a schedule.”
“Well, I’ll never come between K. and her schedule,” he teased.
On the way home, I found myself fantasizing about telling Ben about the blog. It would feel so freeing! The only problem with that is, unlike James, he’d actually want to read it.
Posted at 11:56 PM
Find your date here
