“He sure did,” he said. Not that it made a difference. The night was a wash from the get-go. The Capital Metro bus strike happened at the last minute and Sam arrived straight from work in a bleach-stained Black Flag T-shirt.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You were outright hostile toward them. It’s hardly my parents’ fault that they’re well off. They work like demons.”
She said this plainly. As if there were no privileges inherent in being land-rich by pedigree for generations. A distant relative on her mom’s side, C.E. Doolin, had also happened to invent the Frito. Rather, he’d happened to buy the recipe for a song from the Mexican man who’d invented it.
“It’s not as if it were some great secret that you were”—she gazed up at him—“not well off.” She miraculously sidestepped calling him poor. “Your clothes are a dead giveaway.”
Sam chewed on the inside of his cheek. Lorraine went on cataloging his shortcomings between bites of food. Sam was a romantic, no doubt, and these were parts of their relationship he’d forgotten about. The comparisons. Sam wanted to get up, calmly set his napkin down, and sprint out into the night.
“Hey,” said Lorraine, poking his hand. “I’m just joshing. Partly.”
Sam didn’t think so. He took another bite as his stomach roiled. Though, mercifully, he didn’t pass out.
PENNY.
“Writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”—Mary Heaton Vorse.
Penny got up at five fifteen a.m. No matter when she closed her eyes, they snapped open before six. These days it was a blessing, seeing as she needed a quiet moment to write. She hadn’t had to do that before—find time. And she wondered lately if tapping out little blue bubbles to Sam was somehow sucking her inspiration well dry. Penny feared that she’d used up her best stuff on him, and her mind wandered constantly. It didn’t help that a pert little antenna stayed vigilantly trained on her phone, scanning the airwaves to see if he needed company or was having a mini crisis.
Penny threw on a sweatshirt and cracked open her laptop.
Henry Miller, whose middle name was Valentine and who when he died was married to a Japanese woman, said, “Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterward.” Penny wondered where marrying came in, considering Miller had five wives. She also wondered where workshopping Sam’s drama fell in terms of priorities. For Penny, it was sizing up to be “text first and always.”
SAM HOUSE
Sunday 4:14 PM
What do you love about your writing class Nothing. I hate it
Also i love it
Obvs
Say more
OK
Penny cracked her knuckles. She’d hooked up iMessage to her laptop so she could type as much as she wanted without her fingers falling off.
It’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to feeling like a writer A real one
You sit there and you have to do it
Everyone is capable of putting words down Or telling a story
But not everyone will actually do it This class is about the doing
And getting better
feels professional
Not like a normal college class
Where you learn things you’ll never apply Sam didn’t say anything.
No thought bubble, no interruption, no nothing. Penny went on: You know how you can make a sound on a piano Anyone with fingers can do it
Intuitive
You hit keys
they make noise
Writing and reading then rewriting and then editing is how you make a melody
It’s the same for everyone
It’s not about raw talent
Or having such a big ego that you think what you have to say is so important Or who your parents are
And what they do
It’s the practice of it
Doing it until you’re good
And then because she felt selfconscious:
Does that make sense?
Totally
And I get it
What do you hate about it?
Penny started writing back. And then stopped.
She took another stab at it.
It’s so haaaaaaaaaaard
It hurts my feelings it’s so hard
And it’s scary
ahaha
WELL YEAH
Guess that’s what makes it worth doing?
It’s as scary as you can get
Writers die trying
Do you call yourself a writer?
Ew no
Why ew?
I feel like a fraud
Yeah imposter syndrome
Penny Googled “imposter syndrome.”
Informally used to describe people who are unable to internalize their accomplishments despite external evidence of their competence.
It can mess you up
for sure
It undoubtedly applied to her.
I just . . .
. . .
She tried again.
I haven’t ever seen a writer
A big deal writer
who looks like me
And sometimes when I write
I imagine the hero as white
Like automatically
How fucked is that Penny stopped. She’d never told anyone that before. She wondered how that worked in movies.
She wrote back:
Why do you want to make movies?
UGH IDK
Ever think you’ll jinx it when you talk about it?
YES
Def have imposter syndrome
Making movies is for rich people
It’s so ridic to say you want to be a director May as well say you want to be in the NBA Or famous
Or the inventor of an app Right. The app that invents apps!
Penny smiled.
So you want to be a writer
And I want to make movies
Feels corny to say out loud
But that’s OK
It’s important to at least admit it to yourself And to a few trusted people
Your emergency contact for example
Lol exactly
Then you make it real
Penny loved how unselfconsciously he said that. From anyone else it would sound self-helpy.
PS: I want to read your work someday
Only if I get to see your movie
Fat chance
Penny laughed. There was no way she was going to let Sam read anything she wrote. J.A. didn’t count since she was her professor, and neither did the kids in class. Everyone’s guts were splayed out on the table. It was mutually assured destruction.
One time Jude tried to read over Penny’s shoulder and she’d been apoplectic.
“?‘The terrors lay cold and caged at the bottom of the deep’?”
“Jude!” Penny shrieked, slamming her laptop shut. “You can’t do that. It’s a gross invasion of privacy.” Penny sprang up out of her chair, clutching her computer to her chest.
“Whoa,” said Jude, big-eyed. “Holy shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d wig. Don’t you think you should get used to someone reading it, since the eventual goal is public consumption?”
She had a point.
But Penny was scared of what her stories revealed. The constructive criticism from class—even on the tiniest points—ruined her day, and Jude was enough in her business without getting access to Penny’s thoughts as well.
For her final she was plotting out a story inspired by the true events of a Korean couple that accidentally neglected their baby to death. It was all over the papers in Korea and the sad part was that it happened because the parents were obsessively playing a video game where the whole point—of all things—was to raise a child. Their real-life baby’s name was Sa-Rang, which means “love” in Korean. Everything about the story was tragic and fascinating, and for class Penny wanted to write two narratives, story A from the viewpoint of the mom and B from the perspective of the baby in the video game. It was a story within a story, the way Watchman contained Tales of the Black Freighter, a comic about pirates. Penny was enthralled by the origami of the form except she couldn’t figure it out. Write one first? Or both at the same time?
In class, the story confused everyone.
“Is the main character the Tamagotchi baby or the mom?” asked Maya. Maya was the mixed girl who’d talked about Kardashian hair on the first day and was writing a ghost story about the Santa Ana winds.
“Both,” Penny said. “And it’s not a Tamagotchi. It’s a Sims baby or a clan in Clash of Clans.”
“Whatever,” said Maya. “They’re both wicked unlikable.”
“Oh, because a weather phenomenon that’s on a murder spree is so likable,” retorted Andy, the British-Chinese kid. Penny shot him a grateful look. He smiled.