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Recently I’ve begun rewriting my novel for the third time. It’s a fantasy novel I started back in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. Since then, I’ve received a creative writing degree and written three first drafts that have all been scrapped. Going into my most recent draft number one, I decided to completely change how I go about the drafting process.

When I first began to write, I was a chronic outliner. I felt that if I didn’t have a perfect outline, then I couldn’t start writing. I was convinced that outlining would create the perfect story, and eventually I found I was hardly writing anymore. I had been obsessed with waiting for perfection; I stopped writing my story. I outlined and made Pinterest boards and playlists and forgot that being a writer means writing. It means throwing your worst sentences down on the page and rewriting them a million times. I found that outlining was hindering me more than it was helping me. It stuck me in a loop of first drafts and thinking I could plan my way into perfection.

Most of my writing has been done in a classroom, where a draft would be workshoped, and the feedback would be used to revise the draft.

Revision, it turns out, was my least favorite part. Yet, it was that same part I knew I needed to love. I had an unfortunate complex where I thought outlining somehow made up for editing. I would outline until each scene was clear as a movie in my head. I was convinced I had to get it right the first time, or changing anything would be an admission that I wasn’t perfect at this craft. All that did was leave me with unfinished projects, never able to make it past a first draft. A graveyard of drafts deemed unperfect.

It took me four years and a bachelor’s degree to realize that revision is where perfection happens. Rarely does it come from the first words on a blank page. But it does build from that. Like building a house, the foundation is laid with the idea, and each step in the writing process creates a three-bed, two-bath with a spacious yard and no HOA. You get the idea.

Outlining is a part of building your book. It’s the blueprint, the sketches. It is your ideal idea of what the story is going to look like, and that will not be the same as the finished product. Roadblocks will come; things will change. The final product will be better than anything you could have sketched out.

Going into my most recent draft of my novel, I decided to change the way I went about the drafting process. I had made some huge changes, including moving my MMC across the world and adding his POV to make the story dual POV. In doing so, I was facing two halves of my story.

One half was the story I knew inside out. The one I had been drafting for five years. The characters were fleshed out, and the world was built. I knew every chapter from start to finish. Then I moved my MMC across the world and decided on dual POV, and suddenly half my book was a blank slate.

My MMC was in a part of my world I knew very little about, surrounded by characters who felt like shadows. The universe was taunting me with the problem of plotting vs. pantsing. I knew I could pause my writing and jump back into outlining mode. I could flesh out my characters and plot in bullet point format, but I also knew that would be a waste of time.

Despite knowing little about how my MMC’s story would unfold, I knew him well, and in completely changing his story, I finally understood him. I decided I would let his character drive the story, and I would write like a panser.

I’m ten chapters into my current draft of my novel. It is a fantasy novel, so ten chapters feels like the story is just starting. My FMC’s chapters came far more smoothly. My MMC’s chapters have already been rewritten three times, but I’ve figured out where his story will go far more easily than outlining from start to finish. I was so obsessed with thinking through my story beginning to end that I outlined my way into plot holes and unnecessary information. Scenes that need to be deleted and characters who feel as flat as their bullet points of character development.

So far, I’ve found that the story comes more easily to me when I just write. The characters feel easier to understand, and the plot slides together more easily than if I had planned it. You can’t have an outline that tells you every detail of your story; then you would be writing a first draft. So treat your first draft as such and remember anything you put on the page can be changed over and over.

The simple answer still stands: whether you’re an outliner or a panser is up to you. I’ll say outlining is still very important to the craft. If I hadn’t been with this story for as long as I have and if I didn’t have such a good understanding of my MMC, then I probably would have gone back and outlined.

Though I believe the best answer is balance. Outlining is for major plot points and character development across the book. Not for every detail of every chapter. The only way you can fully understand your story is to write it. Outlining is helpful, but you can’t get sucked into it. You can’t find yourself outlining every chapter, thinking that, in doing so, the first draft will be perfect.

Outlining can organize your thoughts and give you a plan for writing your story, but it isn’t a cheat sheet for your story. Sit and write the story; write it badly. Rewrite, revise, change everything. Outline less and revise more. But don’t forget it’s all just a step in the process.

With Love,

When I first began to write years ago, it was because I was someone who lived in stories, in daydreams of my own creation. The worlds in my mind made the agony of the mundane somewhat worth it. Every writer can relate to the act of daydreaming to escape reality; it’s how we all became writers.

I raise a challenge: make those dreams a reality.

When I was young, I used to dream of a future where I made a living from my creative endeavors, good money too, a rich and comfortable type of money. Yet I found myself chasing a different reality, one in healthcare and job stability. A path I felt like I was being forced down because chasing my creative dreams felt like something I should be embarrassed about. It wasn’t what the people around me wanted, so it couldn’t be what I wanted either.

So when I first started to write, I did so secretly, like I was in high school hiding weed from my mom. I had a story in my head that was beginning to linger and demanded to be written down. I indulged in creativity, something entierly absurd, for my eyes alone, and at the end I had a book. And a dream I would be an idiot not to chase.

So, here I am, still working on that same book. It’s a dual POV adult fantasy novel about a Princess who has been living away from court while she mourns the death of her mother and brother. Until a stranger shows up at her doorstep and pleads for her return to court, in hopes she can talk her father, the King, out of a war he seems intent on starting. While across the world, a banished Prince fights a losing war for his throne and the life of his younger brother. Until he secures an alliance through the marriage of his sister in exchange for an army. On opposite sides of the world, both of them are fighting for something that only seems to sow chaos. The two of them find they are the last hope for a century-old religion and a dream of freedom.

It’s set to be a trilogy, and hopefully, the first book will be finished this year. Yet I’ve been saying that every year for about five years now. Something really does tell me this is the year I’m going to do it.

Besides writing a novel, I was raised as a writer through workshops while pursuing my bachelor’s in creative writing. Usually, we would write two stories a semester, and when our time for workshop came, we would all sit in a circle, and the class would talk about what they loved about my story and what could make it stronger. Some writers hate workshops, others love them. I had a positive experience with them that made me love them. No one understands writers like other writers do, and workshops are a type of vulnerability that very few get to experience. I have to say, between that and being a competitive figure skater for ten years, I’ve developed a thick skin when it comes to rejection. Isn’t that all writing is anyway?

My creative writing degree taught me how to be a writer, not through novels but short stories and creative non-fiction pieces. To be a good writer, I think you must master the art of a short story. I could argue they’re harder than any novel. The less room you have to tell a story, the more precise you must be. I don’t like calling myself a poet, but I think a great short story reads like poetry.

When I first began my creative writing program, I couldn’t even tell you what creative non-fiction was, and now, through an incredible program and one of the best professors I’ve had in my college career, CNF might be one of my favorite things to write. I think it’s the easiest to feed off of your own life. You’re never starting with a blank slate.

Other than my love for writing, I love fashion. Clothing is the ultimate form of self-expression. As a queer woman, clothing is another way for me to tell my story. You can follow me on TikTok, where I post fashion and lifestyle content as well as writing/book content.

Right now, I have endless tabs of half-finished short stories and CNF pieces waiting to be published, and instead, they’re watching my attention wander from one novel idea to the next. Eventually, I wander back. We all do. I wonder, what are you all working on? I’d love to hear what inspired you to fall down this path of job insecurity.

If you care to join me on this path to being a full-time writer, please subscribe, comment, like, share, read, love, and as always,

With Love,

There is a familiar feeling that must be confronted when winter tears you open, through muscle and snapping bones to expose your heart to the cold that weighs it down with sorrow. Your heart freezes over and settles in the bottom of your chest like a rock sinking to the ocean floor.

It’s more than just the cold, dreary days of winter. It’s a far older feeling that winter attempts to dredge up. The feeling of preparing to die as the leaves fall. I think I should join them, surrender my body to this earth. But unlike the leaves, I won’t grow back. That brings hesitation to commit to the permanence of death. I don’t want to die. I just don’t want to live.

I want to stop feeling. My heart rattles in my chest, not from the cold, but from fear. Anxiety is a demon, and I know it has come to punish me. It seeks to take my life from me and turn me into something made of terror. The only place I feel safe is hiding under my blankets, where the impending doom of the world can’t reach me. I go to the kitchen for water, but I don’t take a sip before the fear creeps up my spine. My ribs do not feel like they are protecting me; they are caging me in, suffocating me.

The world is ending. It must be.

I can’t breathe. I’m a shaken can of Coke that can’t explode. I sob, hoping the tears might relieve some of the pressure. The sun is setting and spilling like golden honey over my floor. I sit down. The warmth is nice, it’s calming and reassuring. If the sun stops shining, then there would be reason to worry.

There’s my cat. Seven weeks old. Found in the dirt beneath a friend’s front porch. I wanted a cat. My mom thought it would make me feel less lonely. All I feel now is the weight of responsibility. Another living thing I must take care of. I don’t think I can do it. I can’t take care of myself why would I drag another being into my world of misery?

I faced the decision that I must get rid of her. I am woken by panic attacks, by the dread of what the day will bring me. I start to wonder if it is worth it, taking all this energy to face the day, counting the seconds until it’s over. I call every person in my family and tell them I don’t think I can keep my cat. I’m not seeking advice or disagreement. My only desire is reassurance. I am doing the right thing, and I must do what is best for myself. I’m going to be ok, I’m going to make it through this.

There were two truths: the first was that I was not ok and the second was that the moment I picked my cat up and put her in a cleaned-out ice cream bin to take her home, she was mine. It was a question of morality. Of the terror of people thinking I was a bad person for not keeping my cat. It was a fear of judgment and my own shame.

I kept her. I fell in love with her. But I couldn’t find that same love in myself. I was hollowed out. My passions lay untouched, collecting dust. My dreams were locked away. I was moving through the motions of a life I didn’t want. I lay awake at night staring at my bedroom, dimly lit by the rays of a street light sneaking through the cracks in my blinds.

My cat lies asleep by my feet, on top of her blanket. A blanket that was supposed to be mine. A Christmas gift. But she commandeered it. My mind starts to spin with a plan of who to give her to. My brother’s roommates might want another cat after theirs passed away. My mom loves cats. She’s always talking about getting one.

I realized that this would be her first winter. She had yet to know its harshness, and there couldn’t be a harsher first winter than an innocent being abandoned by the only thing they have ever known. To live with strangers in a home that is entierly unfamiliar. She would wonder when I would be coming to get her, when we could go home, back to the familiar smells. Would she realize that I wouldn’t be coming back, or would her tiny heart fill with hope each time the door opened?

I tell my mom that I can’t handle it anymore. I want one second that isn’t filled with dread. I want to sleep. I toss and turn all night, the worries of the days ahead of me and all the ones behind me infect my ability to have a good night’s sleep.

I feel so alone, like there isn’t a single person on this earth who understands what I am feeling. I feel like a burden. I feel unloved. I’ve isolated myself from my friends. That wasn’t my intention, but months had gone by, and I would see them spending time together and wonder why I wasn’t invited. Do they not care about me?

Of course they don’t. No one seems to, except for my mom, but that is a contractual part of being a mother. I’m never someone’s first choice; eventually, they all leave and find someone better than me. I’m a placeholder. A second choice. I think that if I were to disappear one day, no one would notice, or they would and wouldn’t care where I’d gone. I can’t decide which is a worse fate, never being noticed or being noticed and still disregarded.

If I must feel this way for one more second, then I will not live for one more second.

A grave surrounded me. Six feet under, I looked around and weighed my options: lie down and die, or start climbing. My passions lay unfinished, my dreams unfulfilled, and my relationships rotting. I can’t die, I have things to do.

I bear my bloody and exposed heart to a psychartist, and she gives me meds in the hope they will tell my brain to work in the way I can’t get it to alone. At first, it’s nothing. It’s taking pills with the fear that they will make everything worse. It’s a determination that I will find one that works.

I begin to write down my thoughts. Every night, I dump them out of my mind, scraping the insides to make sure I get everything. I put down my phone, and I pick up a book. I write, and I write like I never have before, because this is my dream, my passion, and I can not die before it is fulfilled.

I have a therapist I’ve been seeing weekly for years. She’s trying her hardest to help, but the tools she’s given me can only get the job half done. She can’t turn off my mind, and she can’t take away the feeling that I’m drowning faster than I can swim. I’m aware of how badly I need help, and I can see the people trying to save me. I want to save myself, too. I want to eradicate these feelings from my body. I’ve felt them, and now I never wish to again.

The pills start to work. I’m drunk after three drinks, but I’m happy. They brought me up to a new baseline of feelings. I still feel them all, but the lows are far less low, and the highs aren’t just scraping the surface, they’re soaring. I’m pouring my heart into my passions and sharing my creativity with the world. I never want to die without my name being remembered.

I text my friends and tell them I miss them when the weekends roll around, and I’m scared of being alone. They’re always there; I just needed to let them in. I needed support, and I needed to feel loved. When I shared that, I received it. Harboring things in my mind, hoping someone can read my thoughts, will only breed loneliness. I can’t be upset with people not understanding if I never explain.

My cat just turned one. I graduate from college this May. I made it through the winter with only the familiar sadness that comes with afternoon sunsets and cold death wherever you look. Yet, I look around, and I realize how beautiful this life is. I love my cat more than any person in this world. Which says a lot because I have some of the best friends this world could possibly produce. I love being a writer, and I will make a living off it one day. I’m beautiful and smart. I’m graduating with two separate degrees (one in creative writing and the other in marketing). I’m terrified of what the future has in store. Of facing the job market. But ever since I was a child, I have dreamed of adulthood, of autonomy and freedom. Of my own apartment filled with friends and glasses of wine and endless laughter.

For the first time in my life, that future is nearly inevitable. I’m one full-time job away from fulfilling a dream of my younger self. A space that was hers alone, where she could be exactly who she wanted, free of judgment and watchful eyes.

I saw a version of myself I hated. A version of myself full of anxiety who thought I was better off daydreaming about the life I wish I had instead of living it.

The birds are chirping. The trees are turning green, and the flowers are blooming. The sun’s rays feel like stepping under the pour of hot water. I can feel the happiness touching my skin. No matter where life takes me, I trust the universe to guide my path. Remember, the plan might change, but never the goal. Winter will come, and it will melt away. The warmth will always come again.

With Love,

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Thus, internet discourse ensued. The article found itself being picked apart on TikTok and—as it goes every few months—lesbians were the center of queer internet conversation. When lesbians find themselves the topic of discussion, it often feels like we are being policed. People step in to tell us what being a lesbian means. They are trying to force the corners of our lesbian identity to bend and break to allow outsiders to reign over a title that doesn’t belong to them.

Lesbians, it seems, are at the bottom of the misogyny totem pole. They are women and gender nonconforming people who don’t center their lives around men. To the average straight mind, it seems impossible that a person could have an existence that doesn’t involve a man. Yet lesbians seem to do it flawlessly. Coming to terms with identity, it forces lesbians to completely decentre men. As someone who was forced to cross that bridge when my world axis shifted to revolve around women. It’s better on the other side. living in the utter bliss that is not caring what men think about you. You stop trying to impress them. Their attention suddenly feels unwarranted. It’s like getting glasses after struggling to see your entire life. Yet, in doing so, it seems we ostracize ourselves from the greater world, the one that sees the blurry image of a man and thinks no one on this Earth could want it any other way.

No one ever questions how gay a gay man is. If he complements a woman, calls her hot, everyone knows it isn’t in that way. They understand that people are able to see someone’s attractiveness, and that doesn’t equate to being attracted to them. When a lesbian does it, suddenly its ok to like men too, its ok to be bisexual. And it is, of course ok to be those things. But that is not what a lesbian is.

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Queerness is a choice. Or so people say.

The article, published on Autostraddle and written by Malavika Kannan, talks about her choice to swear off men. She starts the article by talking about her very real attraction to men she had since she was a child. She even cites diary entries about boys she had crushes on in elementary school. Her feelings for men were real and grew with her throughout her early adulthood. She dated both men and women, but after a pregnancy scare, it was her final straw. When she moved to New York, she decided to “be gay as a lifestyle.” To reject men and embrace queerness and the lesbian culture she had only previously experienced behind a screen.

There is a short paragraph that mentions the idea of choosing your sexuality. She frames the “born this way” moment as, “[framing] queerness as an unhelpable accident of your birth and not a wonderful, principled choice you could make for yourself.” She wishes to open straight women up to the wonderful world of queerness.

What Kannan has done is decenter men. She hasn’t demozied them. She can even still see the good that comes with being a man with a kind heart. There are moments where she can understand the grace of men even while choosing not to center them.

Kannan is privileged by the position of being bisexual. She had the choice to turn away from men and date only women, giving her life the vibrancy of a queer bubble. But one can do all those things and still be bisexual. Her stating her attraction to both genders and her choosing to exclusively date one of them doesn’t make her a lesbian. Though it does make her a structural pillar of our community. She can enlighten straight women all she wants, but it won’t turn them gay. Trust me, I was in a sorority. Its unbelivebale how many times I’ve heard, “I tried that lesbian thing, it just didn’t do it for me.” If sexuality were a choice, I think a lot more women would be choosing queerness and a life built without men.

Our generation is especially poor at dating as the political gap between men and women grows. For the first time in human history, we are moving into a world where women don’t need men, with many women swearing them off entierly, committing instead to their friendship circles and vibrators. Straight women who have dipped their toes into lesbianism, or more so, what it might feel like to be a lesbian. But they are “holding the line” in an attempt to find a decent man in a sea of incles and losers in your DMs. Kannan says she is stuck to her principles and, “[doesn’t] blame those who can’t hold out: Being a lesbian is not for the weak.”

Being a lesbian is not for non-lesbians.

It is hard to wear shoes that are too small, claiming you chose to be a size six when really you’re a size nine. Being a lesbian is the best thing to happen to you when you know it’s right, when you know it’s who you are. It’s as easy as breathing. When you can look back on times in your childhood that make you realize you’ve always been this way. Picking random boys at school to pretend to have a crush on when your friends ask, or having that one female friendship in middle school that was slightly homoerotic.

If you want to read the entirety of the article, you can do so here.

Ties to political lesbianism.

Political lesbianism was a second-wave feminist movement that emerged in the late 60s/early 70s and carried many themes that were echoed in the article. The movement turned sexuality into a political stance where women could reject heterosexuality and, in turn, dismantle the patriarchy. It hailed sexual orientation as a choice and reduced true, innate lesbianism into a political choice. In framing sexuality as a choice, it echoes the harmful rhetoric that is seen as conversion therapy taglines, believing queerness can be “fixed” or “erased”. It is harmful to boil sexuality down to a choice, the very statement that has been used against queer people for centuries.

A choice the world requires proof of.

The summer before my freshman year of college, mere weeks before I was set to move into the dorms, I came out as a lesbian. I had casually told a few friends that I was into girls. From the moment I discovered my attraction to them, men were immediately out of the picture. I finally understood what had taken me seventeen years to figure out. That I wasn’t broken—made incapable of finding romantic love—I was just looking for it in the wrong people. I was built with an attraction to full lips, covered in lip gloss. Slender fingers with painted nails. Glossy long hair that smells like lavender.

The first person I ever told about my attraction to girls was my best friend. She had me pull up the TikToker I was obsessed with and made me list the reasons why I think I liked girls. From the beginning, I was trying to show proof of a part of myself that felt as real as my blue eyes or brown hair. Yet, no one else could see it.

When I worked up the courage to tell my mom, she managed to bring up any boy I’d ever seemed to like. She brought up the media and said I was being brainwashed. That I didn’t know my own mind, and I needed someone to step in to tell me what to think. She told me that the right boy is out there; I just need to find him. She said I couldn’t possibly be a lesbian because I dated a man for a year in high school. What she didn’t understand was that the problem lay in my supposed liking of him. I did like him. He was funny and kind. He always made sure to bring an extra one of his hoodies because I would always forget a jacket, and I would get cold easily. He had all the makings of a good boyfriend, yet something was missing in me. He was my best friend until we took our clothes off, and I would start to cry.

When I started college, I joined a sorority in a desperate attempt to live a life I wished I had had in high school. I was pretty and popular. I would wear mini skirts and crop tops to every bid day and plaster photos all over my Instagram. The boys in the frats were convinced I was faking my lesbianism. I was just playing hard to get. A woman that beautiful can’t be a real lesbian. If she doesn’t like men, what good is she?

Just a few weeks ago, I got coffee with a friend from my sorority. My very straight friend. I dropped out in my sophomore year, but there were a few girls I still kept in touch with. The very few with actual personalities I deemed worthy of my friendship outside of chapter meetings and Monday night dinner. I was telling her about a short-term girlfriend I had when she asked me if I liked both men and women. I had to assure her I was a lesbian, completely attracted to women. For five years, I’ve known her and called her a friend; she had seen girlfriends come and go, never a boyfriend, and yet there I was still proving my existence.

Being a lesbian feels like I’m performing. I’m on stage, trying desperately to convince the audience I’m someone different. I’m not just playing a part, I am this person. I cut my hair short, and I wear clothing from the men’s section. I’ve sworn off dresses and skirts entirely, all in the hope that someone will look at me and think lesbian. I still wear a full face of makeup and have a love for fashion, and no one has ever looked at me and known that I’m a lesbian until I tell them. Bi? Sure. Queer? Definitely. But somewhere in their assumptions, there’s always room for attraction to men.

It is far more than who I’m attracted to, though it is the only part people care enough to see. It makes up every part of me and bleeds into everything I do. It is in the way I think, in my very perception of the world. It is in the way I act, in my mannersims and how I speak to people. It is in my reasoning for leaving my sorority. It is in my writing and my inability to write a character that isn’t queer, too. It is in my circle of friends and the queerness that surrounds me daily. It is an identity. A way of life that was gifted to me. That lies hand in hand with the struggle of rejecting the only other life I had known to make room for a new one to grow in its place.

It’s not something that can be chosen. The understanding can’t be fabricated. Loving women has always been easy for me, but learning that I would never like men felt like I was mourning something. I mourned the idea of normal that had been pushed upon me since birth. I grieved a husband I would never have and the children I would never bear. I grived the idea of having a child that was a perfect mix of its parents. I grieved a whole life I would never have, and in the end, I never wanted. But I mourned it all anyway because there was this thing about me I couldn’t change, and it was about to become a point of judgment and disdain. My life was altered by discovering that I was a lesbian. It was the worst thing to happen to me, then it was the best thing, then it was something I would never change, even if I wanted to.

You don’t choose to be a lesbian; it chooses you. It shapes you, molds you like clay until you are something unreconizable. Getting to love women so freely and openly is truly a gift and something I thank the universe for daily. But it hasn’t always been this way, and we still have further to go. We owe a thanks to the generations of queer people who came before us and fought for the future we are blessed to have. There is a root, an identity in lesbianism that connects us.

I’m tired of people trying to tell us who deserves to be a lesbian and who doesn’t quite fit the mold. It’s the only identity where people think they can bend the definition to fit something it doesn’t. I hate to be the one to tell you, but if you’re attracted to men, you aren’t a lesbian. You can claim the title and live in a falsehood, but you’ll never understand, and it is the understanding that connects us, that shapes our identity through loneliness and ostracism.

Don’t be mistaken, being a lesbian is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Finding out I was a lesbian was finding who I truly am. It led me down a path of discovery with myself that I will always be thankful for.

I saw my dad for dinner over the weekend, and he told me, “You’re growing into yourself. I look at you, and I see Brooke.” I’ve been out for five years, and they have been tremendously rocky. It took my mom all five of them to turn around her feelings on her daughter being queer. But my dad was always a pillar of support for my queerness and a shield against my mom. All he did was love me and make her love me too. I feel more like myself every day, and myself is my lesbianism.

Anyway, with all that said, here’s a photo of me at Pride last year, and remember, a day without lesbians is like a day without sunshine.

With Love,

When I was in high school, I loved math. Algebra specifically. My brain loves patterns and solving problems. I love untangling my necklaces when they get all knotted together. When I was in elementary school, a classmate brought his Newton’s cradle to class, and after every single sticky set of fifth-graders’ hands touched it, the fishing line strings were irrevocably tangled. Our teacher tried to untangle it to no avail, and the poor kid even shed a few tears. That is, until I wandered over. I stood there looping the metal balls on their fishing wire strings under and over one another until the cradle was back in working order. I hadn’t even done it for him; I did it for myself, and my brain’s subconscious desire to solve a problem. For as long as I can remember, I felt as if there was nothing I couldn’t think my way out of.

Because I loved math, I was good at it, great even. Algebra class was an easy A. I would spend many long evenings trying to teach my brother my skills, but there was something about the way my brain was wired that couldn’t possibly be taught. He was always better with his words, and that was a talent I didn’t have, or I thought I didn’t anyway. He was always considered the English kid, while I was the math one. He was good at reading and writing, but that was because the words didn’t swirl on a page for him. They didn’t jumble in this brain, mistaking one letter for another. He would laugh at me when I would read aloud and pronounce words wrong, like the time I mistook the word photographs for potatoes. But that’s ok because I would laugh at him when—after the tenth attempt at a factoring problem—he still didn’t understand.

For most of my life, I heard that I was a math person. I wasn’t a reader, certainly not a writer. I should stick to what I’m good at. But something in my heart called me to stories. I lived more in the stories in my head than in the real world. I would daydream for hours, hiding in the movies playing in my mind like a kid would hide under their blankets. The things I would daydream about felt like lives I would never get to live, like I had to reserve my life’s wildest desires to the corners of my mind. In those corners, a voice told me I could find a real, true love in writing. And I ignored it for years.

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Selfishness is Sometimes Required

I could tell you about my narcissist mother or my emotionally absent father, and how my mom shaped every aspect of my life to seem like a redo of hers. I won’t bore you with all of those details. But the simple fact of it all, I had no idea who I was. All of my interests seemed shaped around what I thought my mom wanted. I lived to appease the people in my life but never myself.

When the COVID-19 pandemic came, the world screeched to a halt, and so did my senior year of high school. For the first time in my life, I had nothing to do. My time wasn’t torn between school, figure skating practice, and student athletic training. I wasn’t busy from sunup to well after sundown. The few classes I did have moved online. It was announced that we would all pass, no matter what. The ice rinks were all closed and I woke up every day with a sense of what will I do to pass the time.

Like any other teenager, I downloaded TikTok and filled my days with doomscrolling. I could have spent the entire pandemic wasting away with an unchecked screen time. But either the app itself or the universe at large knew this wasn’t an opportunity I should waste. I had landed on BookTok, and for the first time since middle school, I started reading again. That ignited my love for stories with a child-like wonder I hadn’t felt in years.

Deep in the loneliness of the pandemic, I decided to write a book—an epic fantasy novel filled with everything my history-loving heart could possibly imagine: dangerous politics, glittering royalty, rebellions with a bone to pick, magic gifted from the gods, and dragons tied to bloodlines. It was a bold move for having never written much in my life, and I was constantly told I would be terrible at it if I ever gave it a shot.

I had finally begun indulging my own interests. I did so silently, hiding these interests away from the people around me like I was having an affair and my world would crumble if anyone found out how I spent my free time. I had tried my hand at fan fiction and written the occasional story when I was forced to for English class. Everything little thing I wrote filled me with a strange sense of excitement, the kind that left my fingertips tingling like I was so filled to the brim with it, it might burst out of me. It was that little voice in the back of my mind that told me this was what I was meant to do, this was my passion that I would never get to give way to. Until I did.

At first, this book was just for me, a way to get the stories that occupied my mind somewhere other than, well, my mind. I thought that was all it could be, an indulgence of my own creation. Never did I think it would be good enough to graze the eyes of others or end up on a bookstore shelf. I worked on the book every day and finished the first draft before I began college. That first draft is now gone from this world, deleted before another set of human eyes could ever look at it. It was a trial, a way for me to teach myself how to write. I realized this wasn’t just a hobby; it was a craft I wanted to excel in, and I was going to try and try again until it was perfect. So I decided to start from the beginning and write the entire thing again.

There was still the feeling that the people around me would never approve, and I lived for outside validation more than anything else. I figured if I ever published this book or got my writing into the world, it would be far off in the future. That future felt like a different world, a chasm so large I couldn’t make the leap from where I was to where I wanted to be. I thought that the future I craved would be nothing but a world of daydreams I could wander off to when my reality became too harsh to stand.

When I started college, I was a nursing major. I liked helping people, and there was something about piecing someone back together that fascinated me. More than that, I thought it was a career that the people around me would approve of. It was a decision made with the consideration of others and not an ounce of consideration for myself, my wants, my desires, my needs.

By the time my sophomore year of college came around, I was in the misery of my own creation. My nursing classes were getting harder, more in tune with what they would be like when I was actually in the program and not just checking off the prerequisites. College was always something that felt so far away. I thought that by the time I got there, I would somehow be a different person and be living a different life. All these dreams I’d reserved for my mind would miraculously become a reality. Yet here I was, a year and a half in, letting my dreams lead me nowhere because I would rather live for other people so I could avoid their judgment and criticism. I thought my dreams were an embarrassment. Yet in the cracks of time I had entirely to myself, I indulged those dreams.

There were so many late nights spent huddled in my dorm room, computer keys clicking away, word after word. I remember one night in particular, after working on my book so late into the night, my vision had gone blurry. I could hardly make out my computer screen, so I decided to pause for the night. I was listening to the playlist dedicated to my book, high off the flow of writing so endlessly. I began to dance around my dorm, humming my songs and thinking up new ideas. My mind was spinning with so much creativity, I felt like I was floating, high off of something that no drug in the world could recreate. I remember telling my therapist at the time about it, saying I’d never felt so boundless before. His reply was so simple, he said, Well, Brooke, that is because you’re happy.

Oh, so this is happiness, this thing that cradles my soul with warmth, that suspends me in a moment of pure ecstasy. Where has this been all my life?

I knew then and there I would be a fool not to do whatever it took to make writing my reality as I spent my nights laying the foundation of a future I once thought unachievable.

So, there I was, in my sophomore year of college, realizing that if I ended up in nursing school, I would most likely end up flunking out, not because I couldn’t do it, but because I didn’t want to. I had no passion for nursing, and that gave me no determination to be absolutely beaten bloody by five semesters of nursing school. I had this novel that was beginning to consume my mind and settle in my bones, and I wanted to take it and run with it. Just me and my book running straight into the future, hoping one day I can call myself an author.

I had found a fascinating interest in my English composition classes and a new love for learning that had once been extinguished. English classes in college didn’t feel like they did in high school, and after a single written memoir assignment, I knew I was going to change my major to English. I knew this was where my passion lay. I was going to hone this craft to perfection until I was scribbling down stories on my deathbed. I knew I was going to start living my life for me.

That Future is Now the Present

I’m now in my fifth year, and I will graduate in the spring with a bachelor’s in English and Marketing. I’m in a financial management class, and even the most basic mathematical equations give me a headache. My teacher says that algebra is our friend, but it feels like my enemy, and I almost prefer it that way. I’m an English person now. Besides, I suppose that is what happens when one goes years without taking a math class. I’ve lost my touch.

I’ve taken fiction and non-fiction classes, a mystery and thriller writing class, and even dipped my toe in poetry. I learned I’m no poet, I’ll gladly stick to the longer form of writing, to stories. Stories are their own kind of puzzle, a problem waiting to be solved. It’s the process of piecing together the perfect word to make the perfect sentence. Those sentences make paragraphs, and those paragraphs slide together like the laser-cut edges of a puzzle piece.

I’ve known for a long time that I’m a perfectionist. I don’t like trying new things, and I hate that I must be bad at something I’ve never done before. My perfectionism impacts my writing; sometimes it makes it nearly impossible; sometimes it means I’d rather not write at all than possibly put something mediocre on the page. I’ve learned that I can’t possibly be a writer without writing something imperfect, even something terrible. I’m attempting to learn to love the editing process, where I can take a draft of something I’ve written and turn it into what I envisioned in my mind all along. I can’t write something perfect on the first try, but ten tries later, it might be close.

My book has come on this dizzying journey with me. Everything I have learned can be reflected in its outlines, its chapters, and the thoughts jotted down in my notes app. I want every reader in this world to read it, even if they hate it, and especially if they love it. My goal is to write someone’s favorite book, a story they can fall in love with just as I have, with the world I have created and the characters who, embarrassingly enough, I might consider some of my best friends. I talk to them far too much not to consider them anything less than friends, at least.

I’m still chasing that high from when I first began to write. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel it again, but I’m addicted now. I write because I think it will make me happy like it once did. But there’s more to it. I write because it satisfies a desperate hunger buried so deep within me that nothing else can fill it. A deep and endless void of every thought I’ve ever had and discarded story ideas I might never come back to. If I don’t write, my mind will burst like a gas leak that meets a spark. The calm of not knowing danger lurks ahead. The calm that turns into a fire fixed with the rage to consume everything around it. I prefer writing this way, in the calm that comes before a storm, where each word I write keeps the storm at bay. Writing is a part of me now, a fifth limb. When the writer’s block inevitably comes and my life gets in the way of putting words on a page, the rage will burn them into writing for me.

I’ve fallen out of love with writing, then slowly fell back in. I’m finally in a place where I want to share my writing. My perfectionist mind thinks maybe after all these years, it’s finally good enough to show the world. Even if just one person reads this, I hope you stick around.

If you do, here are some things you might expect to see:

• Short stories, based on anything and everything.

• Behind the scenes of writing a fantasy book and some sneak peeks of the book itself.

• Tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years of writing and studying, including:

  • Plot

  • Characters

  • Worldbuilding

  • Outlining

  • And so, so much more

• Even hot topics like when inspiration crosses the line into plagiarism, things that are meant to be fun and entertaining, still need to be good, and how people have lost all sense of media literacy.

If you’ve made it this far, I think we’ll be fast friends. For my creative writers, daydreamers, and lovers of storytelling, this is for you. Grab a cup of coffee and a notebook—or open up that blank doc—and let’s write. We should be writing right now anyway.

Brooke M. Hill

I snapped to look at her, eyes wide, as my heart thudded so hard against my chest I thought it was going to escape. Moonlight poured in from the window I spared one more glance out of, checking to ensure the coast was clear, before crossing the room to Mia’s side.

We reentered the office together. It was the smallest room of the four-bedroom house, with a desk smack in the center. The furthest wall held a rack of guns; a rather fear-inducing display of rifles. I swallowed a lump that rose in my throat. I had no time to think about how we could all be killed with our own personal rifle; one gun for each little bitch who broke into the sheriff's house.

Mia slid out of my way as I rounded behind the desk. She had pulled each drawer wide open and shuffled up the continents like she was tossing together a salad. Still, I took my turn, digging through each drawer, elbow deep. We were told the book would be in the top drawer on the right side. It should be here. I found a hefty, black stapler, some old notebooks with loose pages halfway from falling out, and a highlighter with a missing cap. There were pens, pencils, scissors, and crumpled tissue that was most likely used. But no book. The book was missing and we were fucked.

“He’s home,” Bella stood breathlessly in the doorway. I hadn’t even heard her run from the other room where she had been keeping watch. Her already pale face was void of color, and her mouth hung agape.

I kept frantically digging, praying that if I dug through these drawers long enough, I could dig up something new, like I was shoveling dirt in search of treasure.

“Harper, we have to go,” Mia hissed behind me. When I still didn’t relent, she grabbed the collar of my shirt and hauled me to my feet. If I wasn’t already scared shitless I might have been surprised by the ease in which she got me standing. But the second I stood, she was kneeling, shoving things haplessly back into the drawers and slamming them shut.

“The garage door just opened. He’s in the house,” Bella’s voice shook with the magnitude of an earthquake.

For a long second, we simply stood there in the sheriff’s home office illuminated by nothing but moonlight. Then my eyes flickered to the gun rack, and I wondered which gun would be the one to put a bullet in me. Or if the sheriff would elect to use his sidearm instead, which he probably would. He would be in a hurry to kill us.

I pulled Bella and Mia from the room and moved to hover at the top of the stairs. The sheriff was on the phone, pacing around his kitchen as he talked. His voice was deep but smooth, alluring almost. He sure was good at talking. He charmed people with his smirk and flow of compliments. But it was all fake. It was the devil wearing a mask and hoping God wouldn’t notice. It made my stomach churn.

I grabbed Bella and Mia by their arms, tugging them along into the master bedroom. The window, I mouthed. Bella nodded and got to work undoing the latch and hoisting it open. I rounded the corner of the bed and pulled open the drawer to the nightstand. There was a string of condoms and a few loose viagra pills that rattled in the drawer. But no book. I wrinkled my nose and shut the disturbing continents back inside.

“Guys,” Bella spoke through her teeth.

It all happened in the same dizzying breath. The sheriff’s footsteps began to echo up the stairs. His boots came down heavy on each step. Mia gasped and whirled, arm raised, the book in hand. Her elbow grazed the lamp on the edge of the dresser. The lamp landed on the wood floor and exploded into a thousand pieces, and the noise reverberated through every corner of the house.

The sheriff’s footsteps stopped. I heard the rustle of leather as he pulled his gun from its holster. “You picked the wrong fucker’s house to break into.” His voice boomed. It sent us clattering for the window.

Bella went first, already running to the edge of the flat roof so she could dangle from the ledge and drop herself onto the lawn. Mia was next. She bit back a yelp when she misjudged how low she had to duck and banged the top of her head on the window frame.

I was last. Every part of my body shook violently, and my heart pounded so loudly in my ears I couldn’t hear them call my name, beckoning me to hurry.

I froze in a crouch, halfway on the roof and halfway in the bedroom. The sheriff stood in front of me, nothing but the width of the bed separating us. His hair was a ratted mess, and his eyes were sunken deep and bloodshot. His gun was in his hands, but pointed towards the ground.

Recognition smeared across his face. “You little cunt,” he barked. He raised the gun.

My leg caught on the window frame, and I toppled over onto the roof. A gunshot rang through the night. The top half of the window shattered. I scrambled to my feet, cutting my palms on the shards of glass. I came to the ledge as another gunshot rang through the crisp air. I couldn’t dangle. I didn’t have time. He was coming through the window. So I jumped.

I landed on the lawn with a crack. Something was sprained, possibly broken. Bella and Mia grabbed one arm each and hauled me to my feet. I didn’t feel a thing. Hell, with the amount of adrenaline coursing through my body, the sheriff could have shot me and I wouldn’t have noticed. I shook them off and we broke into a run, using the neighbors’ bushes and cars to hide our fleeing silhouettes.

Despite it all, a giddy smile was plastered onto my face. Clutched desperately to Mia’s chest was the book. I didn’t want to look inside because I’m not a disgusting pervert, but I also knew exactly what was in there: hundreds and hundreds of photos. Each one was undeniable proof. It was justice. Justice for my sister and for every other girl forever trapped within those pages.

Enjoy life in prison, asshole.

Hypothetically, how many years in prison would I get for cutting out Caden’s tongue? I’m talking sawing that thing off with a rusty, dull knife, fingers crossed that it causes an infection that kills him. That would probably be a few more years, right? I was also thinking I could cut it off, then shove it right back in his mouth and let him suffocate on it. Really, I’m open to any option that involves never hearing him speak ever again.

He is my boyfriend, I know. I think a prerequisite of that is actually liking the man. At some point, I did, I think. It’s getting harder to tell these days. He could breathe, and I would find a way to be annoyed by it. Too loud, too sharp, too airy.

Last night, we were in bed together watching an episode of Bridgerton. It seems to be all anyone can talk about from their couches, mid-pandemic, in the strange fever dream of a national lockdown. At this point, I think we all might be delusional and globally bonding over a singular Netflix original series, a reminder that there is a life outside of the four walls of our bedrooms.

We get to the scene where Daphne straddles the Duke and forces him to finish inside of her. Arguably, that was pretty fucked up of her, no one is denying that. But Caden simply lost it. He fully sat up, waving a sharply pointed finger at the TV screen.

“That was rape,” He said over and over again, pointing, jaw slack.

I nodded, of course, because yes, that is exactly what we had just witnessed. Sexual assault. And that is not the part that bothered me. For all its worth, he showed he does have two eyes in his head and a brain that works. But, I realized that if the positions had been reversed and it was the Duke who held Daphne down and forced himself inside of her, Caden would have said nothing. It wasn’t him pointing out the obvious that irked me so, but him only caring that it had happened to another man. That is what made me want to slap him in the face and kick him out of my house.

I didn’t, of course, slap him or kick him out. But I think I’m beginning to realize that I might hate my boyfriend. I also think he is owed credit where credit is due. There we were lying in my bed, fully clothed, watching Bridgerton of all things. He’s a good sport, I’ll give him that. He hadn’t even asked to have sex or, worse, asked for a blow job.

But in summary, I think I hate him, I certainly hate having sex with him, and I think we need to break up.

February 5, 2021

Was it something I did?

Technically, yes, it was everything he had ever done. From the way he talked to the way he breathed to the way he’d touch me, and it would make my skin crawl, that knowing churning in my stomach when I felt like he only saw me as a body and not a person.

We broke up in his car. He lived a good thirty-minute drive from me, so we decided to meet somewhere in the middle. I gave him back his clothes, or I tried, he told me to keep them. Honestly, I’m kind of happy about that part. Those pajama pants are the comfiest pair I own. At least I didn’t have to part ways with them.

He asked if it was something he did. The short answer is yes, but the longer answer is, I think there is something wrong with me. I don’t think I’m built for this love thing. I think I’m incapable of it. Whoever was putting me together missed a few critical pieces on the assembly line. I told him it was all me, that there was stuff I needed to figure out, and I had to do it on my own. I don’t think I lied. I just kept the other half of the truth to myself.

I think I unreasonably hated him. My growing annoyance with everything he did might not have been a tell-tale sign that he was the worst person ever. I think it meant I was, though. I might have been too harsh on him, and I found myself wondering if he was truly as bad as my mind had conjured him to be.

I hated a man who was decent, who was kind. He was funny, too, most of the time. I don’t think I ever loved him, not in the way I was supposed to, but we were friends. Good friends. You don’t spend that much time with someone not to miss their absence, even if you wanted them gone in the first place. Was I glad to have him out of my life? Yes. Was I going to miss him? Also, yes.

April 3, 2021

I’ll admit, it has taken me a very long time to get onto this TikTok thing. I was going to be one of those people who never downloaded it. Maybe I thought it made me morally superior. But what else was I going to do? My state is still in lockdown, and they’ve decided I automatically get to pass all my classes this semester, so there’s no need for me to try in them anymore. I have no boyfriend anymore. This stupid little app has filled a cataclysmic void of boredom.

Today, during my post-lunch doomscrolling. I came across the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I spent the rest of my afternoon, up to dinner, scrolling intensely through her account. I was in a trance, hypnotized by a level of beauty I didn’t know existed.

I’ve seen plenty of beautiful women in my life. Arguably, I am one of those beautiful women. I heard it enough throughout my life to know it was true. But there was something about her that made my stomach flip like I was on a roller coaster. It felt like my internal organs were going to take flight.

Then there was a question in the back of my mind, clawing its way out of my subconscious and screaming its way through my internal monologue. Do I like girls?

May 11, 2021

Oh, I like girls.

It’s just us here, so I figure I’ll be honest. I’m just a girl, and I have needs. And no one but my own two hands to fulfill them. Late last night, with my hands between my legs, I closed my eyes and imagined a girl touching me like that. The soft touch of her hands and the wetness of her lips as she kissed me right in the spot that made my back arch and a moan part my lips.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, no man through years of crushes and boyfriends, had ever made me feel like that. And the mystery woman from last night was nothing but a figment of my imagination, allowing myself to indulge in a secret moment for only my own memory. It was a test, an experiment, and I passed with flying colors.

There’s no coming back from this. I’ve uncovered a part of myself that can never be locked away again. Like graffiti, no matter how many times it's painted over, more will always show back up. I don’t want this to be painted over. I like this.

June 22, 2021

I don’t think I like this.

On the very positive side of discovering that I like women has come the terrifying bridge I don’t want to cross. The very real possibility that I don’t like men. At all, like not even a sliver. This bridge hangs high over a canyon. It's made of rope and cracked wood. There is a very real possibility that it will break on my crossing and I’ll plummet to my death.

Liking women is beautiful. Everything about it is lovely, like running through a field of sunflowers on a perfectly cloudless summer’s day. There’s that sweet aroma of blooming flowers, freshly pollinated. Bees even buzz in the air, and normally, at the sight of a bee, I would run in the opposite direction, filled with terror. But not here, in this magical world of girls loving girls.

Realizing I don’t like men feels like something died, like I’m carrying around a rotting limb. Its flesh is sliding from the bone, and it's crawling with maggots. And the smell, the wafting, perfume-like scent of the steaming hot shit that is death.

I feel like I’m in mourning. Call me a Victorian and get me a veil. My entire life, I was told to like boys, so I did. I was always told: when I get a boyfriend or when I get a husband. There was never any option given to me to not like boys; I never gave myself that option either.

Now, all that was crumbling in front of me, like the ancient ruins of a city long lost. I would never have a husband or children with him. This entire life I’d built up in my head like a movie montage was slowly fading away. I have to mourn the life I’ll never get to have. Come to terms with the fact that my mother will probably not be coming to my wedding. That from here on out, people will feel like they can judge me based on one fact alone. People will hate me for something as simple as who I love. My existence is illegal in seventy-two countries. I have to be careful where I travel. I’m certainly saying goodbye to getting married in Italy.

If someone could point to the very part of my body that made me this way, give me the rusty knife, cause I’m cutting it out. I’ll do anything for a chance to be this world’s twisted version of normal. This feels too isolating. This is a visceral feeling of self-hatred I want to be free from. So give me the knife, let me cut it away. I don’t care if I have to rip my heart out of my chest, tear away my ribs just to get to it. Or if it's deeper than that, ingrained in my very soul, in a part of me so intertwined no knife could ever reach it. I don’t care if it kills me.

At least the world will stop looking at me like I’ve done something wrong.

October 10, 2021

I lost a life, but I also gained a brand new one.

I woke up one day and realized that I don’t care what the world thinks of me. Cause I know what I think. I love myself and who I am. It only took a while to figure it out. But that’s how life goes, you never know what the road will look like until you’ve reached the end. Or I my case, only a pit stop.