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He gives me a hard, penetrating look I feel the weight of even through the camera. “Incredibly productive. Especially when you glance up at me every two minutes.”

“How would you know unless you’re also staring at me?”

“My peripheral vision is excellent,” he says, though I can tell he’s trying not to laugh. “Okay, okay. Let’s go for twenty more minutes, no distractions.”

Three minutes later, he glances up again. “You’re still looking at me!”

“I’m sorry! You’re very cute when you’re concentrating!”

* * *

By mid-October, I’ve gotten two more assignments back from Professor Everett. Her critiques are all extremely kind, just as warm as she is, but I’m someone who thrived on straight A’s and 4.0’s in high school. Even if they’re graded more on participation than content, it still feels like a pat on the head and a sorry, you’re not good enough.

I’d love for you to dig a little deeper here.

Could we play with more sensory details?

I want to hear your voice, she wrote in her most recent feedback on a piece about a pivotal childhood memory. I wrote a solidly lackluster eight hundred words about watching a World War II documentary with my grandpa, hoping to turn that experience into a larger commentary about my own Holocaust education and how I can’t recall the exact moment I learned about it.

Rereading it now, I can see it’s heavy-handed, completely surface. Not what I wanted to communicate with it at all.

If Professor Everett were cruel or arrogant, then maybe I wouldn’t want to impress her as much as I do. Surely, in four years at Westview, I turned in work that wasn’t my best. But my teachers knew me, and they weren’t about to judge based on one off assignment.

To Professor Everett, I am a blank page.

Our next piece of writing is focused on genre, combining one we’re unfamiliar with and one we love. The goal is to demonstrate how so much writing cannot be confined to a single genre. My short story is science fiction about a lonely girl who falls in love with a boy via anonymous messages they send on the computers in their spaceship—only what she doesn’t know is that he’s actually her best friend.

I’m not taking any chances this time, approaching my creative block as logically as I can. Because it’s not technically writer’s block—I’ve been writing, just not well. So I’ll simply rule out each element that isn’t working until I isolate the problem.

Issue number one: my dorm room isn’t exactly shimmering with inspiration, so I’m working in the campus library, headphones on, a soup bowl–size hazelnut latte with extra whipped cream in front of me (solving potential problem number two, no creativity on an empty stomach). I choose a seat near the window for prime natural lighting (potential problem number three), and I’m wearing the kind of chunky cable-knit sweater that I’m convinced was made for writers. Wardrobe isn’t one of my potential problems, but dressing the part surely can’t hurt.

The spaceship is

Shit. What does a spaceship look like?

Ten minutes of Google Image–searching later, I return to my Word document.

The spaceship is sleek and stark, its control panels emitting a soft blue glow.

No, no. I should start with character, not setting. Romance is all about the characters, and that’s why I love it so much.

Unless I should start with setting because I’m writing outside my usual genre?

For Amara, the spaceship had always been home. She didn’t know what most of the buttons or dials or levers could do, but

Wait. Is it anti-feminist of me if she doesn’t know how to operate the spaceship?

Amara knew every button and dial and lever like she’d been operating the spaceship for years—because she had.

I yank off my headphones, because maybe I’m no longer someone who writes to music, but I overhear too many hushed conversations to keep focused. And despite my proximity to a window, the lighting isn’t the best, so I switch tables. Then I switch floors, sloshing some of my soup-latte on my jeans and scrubbing at the stain for five minutes before giving up. It’s not procrastination; I’m merely trying to eliminate distractions.

Even in a galaxy of brilliant stars, Amara was lonely

Amara couldn’t really open up to anyone except her best friend

Amara and everyone on board her fucking spaceship should die in a fiery explosion

Amara and her best friend arrrrrrrrasdfgladhfliasfasfharogrgirg