I’ve just learned from Twitter that my mentee, Emmy Cho, has signed with Athena’s former literary agent, Jared, a hotshot shark known for six-and seven-figure deals. As her mentor I’m happy for her, but I also feel a spike of anxiety every time Emmy shares her good news. I’m afraid she’ll catch up to me, that her inevitable book deal will involve an advance bigger than mine, that she’ll sell film rights to a production company that will actually sell it to a studio, that her fame will then overshoot mine, and that the next time we see each other at some literary event she will merely greet me with a cool, superior nod.
The only way to get ahead, of course, is to dazzle the world with my next project.
But I’ve no clue what that might be.
BRETT CALLS ONE MORNING, OSTENSIBLY TO CATCH UP. WE TRADE pleasantries for a while, and then he asks, “So, how are things going in writing land?”
I know what he’s really asking. Everyone’s clamoring for my next pitch, and it’s not only because publishing has such a short attention span. What he’s thinking, and what Daniella is thinking, is that if I can put out a follow-up to The Last Front soon, something clearly not plagiarized or so intimately linked to Athena, but that still retains the ineffable Juniper Song spark, then we can dispel the rumors once and for all.
I sigh. “I’ve got to be honest: I have nothing. I’m out of ideas. I’ve been toying with a few concepts, but nothing really sticks.”
“Well, that’s all right.” I can’t tell if he’s irritated or not. This is the third time we’ve had this conversation, and I know that time is running out. There’s no hard deadline—I only signed a one-book contract with Eden, but that contract stipulates that Daniella has the right to a first look on my next work. Brett wants to show her something very soon, while we’re still in her good graces, otherwise who knows what other publishers would want to pick me up next? “You have to let creativity come when it comes; I know that. It’s just that you’ve got social capital right now, and it’s best to strike when the iron’s hot—”
“I know, I know.” I press my fingers against my temples. “I just can’t think of anything that hooks me. I have to really care about something, you know? It’s got to have the heft, the importance—”
“It doesn’t have to be great, Junie. We’re not trying to win the Pulitzer. We don’t even need something like The Last Front.” Brett pauses. “You just have to publish, you know, something. Anything.”
“Okay, Brett.”
“You get what I’m saying, though?”
I roll my eyes. “Loud and clear.”
We say our goodbyes. Brett hangs up. I groan and turn back to my laptop, where I’ve been staring at the same blank, accusing Word document for weeks.
THE PROBLEM ISN’T THAT I’M OUT OF IDEAS. I’VE GOT PLENTY OF IDEAS, and even more time to turn those ideas into full drafts. Now that publicity commitments for The Last Front have died down, I have no excuse not to be productive. Brett’s right to be impatient—I’ve been making vague promises about forthcoming projects for over a year now, and nothing has materialized.
The problem is that every time I sit down to write, all I hear is Athena’s voice.
The Last Front was supposed to be a onetime collaboration. Athena’s research and brainstorming, my prose and polish. I felt a wonderful, mysterious alchemy during those fevered weeks, when I conjured her writing voice from beyond the grave and harmonized my own against it. I wasn’t dependent on her—I’ve never needed her to write—but the joint exercise gave me confidence at a time when I had none. It made my pen so sure, knowing I was writing across her footsteps.
But now that I’m trying to move on, she won’t leave me alone. Most authors will confess they hear an “inner editor,” an internal naysayer that nitpicks and hampers their attempts at first drafts. Mine has taken the form of Athena. Haughtily, she peruses and dismisses every story idea I attempt. Too trite. Too formulaic. Too white. She’s even harsher at the sentence level. The rhythm’s off. That imagery doesn’t work. Seriously? Another em dash?
I’ve tried to block her out and push through, to write in spite of and to spite her. But it’s in those moments that her laughing grows louder, her taunts meaner. My doubts only ever intensify. Who am I to imagine I can achieve anything without her?
I’ve put on a stiff upper lip in public, but Geoff’s Twitter antics rattled me more than I let on. Athena Liu’s Ghost. A grotesque choice of name; surely chosen to surprise and provoke, but there’s more truth to it than even Geoff knew. Athena’s ghost has anchored itself to me; it hovers over my shoulder, whispering in my ear every waking moment of my day.
It’s maddening. These days I’ve started dreading the thought of trying to write, because I can’t write without thinking of her. Then, of course, my thoughts inevitably spiral beyond the writing to the memories: the final night, the pancakes, the gurgling sounds she made as she thrashed against the floor.
I thought I’d gotten over her death. I was doing so well mentally. I was in a good space. I was fine.
Until she returned.
But isn’t that what ghosts do? Howl, moan, make themselves into spectacles? That’s the whole point of a ghost, is it not? Anything to remind you that they’re still there. Anything to keep you from forgetting.
I MUST CONFESS: I DOUBLE-DIPPED.
That night in Athena’s apartment, I didn’t only take The Last Front. I also took a smattering of papers lying across her desk, some typewritten, some covered in Athena’s looping, nearly illegible scrawl, accompanied by abstract line doodles whose significance I still haven’t figured out.
I swear it was only out of curiosity. Athena was always so cagey about her creative process. The way she described it, it was like the gods dropped award-winning stories into her mind fully formed. I just wanted to get a look inside her head, to see if her early-stage brainstorming was anything like mine.
It turns out, we create in very similar ways. She starts with random words or phrases, some original, some clearly song lyrics or minor modifications of other, more famous lines of literature—Rook was already dead when I arrived; the boy from nowhere; it was a dark yet brilliant night; if I hit you, would it feel like a kiss?
I place them out on my desk now, staring at them, hunting for a shred of inspiration. I can’t get Athena’s voice out of my head, but maybe I can work with it. Maybe I can force her ghost back into service and resurrect that same unholy chemistry that fueled The Last Front.
There are only a few completed sentences and only one completed paragraph, written out by hand, which begins like this:
In my nightmares she walks into a dark and never-ending hallway, and as many times as I call her name, she never turns around. Her dress leaves wet streaks on the carpet. Her pale arms are bloody and scratched. I know she has slain the bear. I know she has escaped the forest. She moves now with that same urgency, abandoning the past like Orpheus, inverted, like if she never glances back over her shoulder, it will cease to exist. She forgets I am trapped here, unable to move, unable to make her see me. She forgets me entirely.
I don’t know how to explain what happens next. It’s like the story was already in my heart, waiting to be told, and Athena’s voice is the spell to draw it out. Suddenly my writer’s block dissipates, and the unlocked gates to my imagination swing wide open.
I can see the shape of the story in full: its opening hook, its underlying themes, its shocking yet inevitable ending. Our protagonist is a barefoot girl, a young witch chasing her immortal mother through eternity, uncovering her secrets only to form more questions about herself and where she’s come from. It’s a not-so-subtle exploration of my feelings toward my own mother: how she transformed so abruptly after my father’s death; how the adventurous young girl she once was, who was perhaps not so different from me, has been locked entirely away. It’s about wishing you knew who your parents were. It’s about needing things from your parents you’ll never get.
When you’re in the zone, drafting doesn’t feel like an effortful artifice. It feels like remembering, like putting down in written form something that has been locked inside you all along. The story pours out of me, paragraph by paragraph, until I look up and realize that it’s nearly dawn, and that I’ve written almost ten thousand words in a manic sprint.