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But she just says, “You know what, I think I prefer that one too.”

At the opposite end of the kitchen, the backyard door swings open. A tall, bearded man dashes in, carrying two jugs of cider.

Upon seeing me, his expression morphs into alarm. “Sorry! I’m not here!”

Miranda laughs. “Thanks, Jon.”

“No problem.” Her boyfriend, husband—whoever he is—holds a finger to his lips before he disappears outside. “You never saw me.”

I expect Miranda to explain him in some way, but she seems thoroughly immersed in our conversation. “And you’ve always wanted to write romance?” she asks, stirring her drink.

“I’ve loved it since I was kid,” I say. “I tried to write about it in that first assignment, but I know it sounded… a little flat.”

“Not flat,” she says gently. “Just not you.”

“And I’ve had this worry—” I break off again, wondering if someone spiked the cider with truth serum and if there’s a limit to just how many of my issues I’ll spill to this poor woman tonight. “I’m in a long-distance relationship with someone really wonderful.” Maybe it’s a little personal to tell her about Neil, but I nearly started crying in her house, and writing is nothing if not personal. “He’s at school in New York. Romance has always been the thing I want to read most. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to write. And then as soon as I started dating someone I truly, deeply loved… it all dried up. Like, I don’t know, I’m putting too much pressure on the writing to reflect that love.”

Miranda considers this for a while as she reaches for a piece of white-cheddar popcorn. “Hmm.”

“So I’m just wondering… is there something wrong with me that I can’t write when I’m happy? Do I need to be in pain to be creative?” With a humorless laugh, I hold up my hands. “Are all writers tortured geniuses—not that I’m anything remotely close to a genius, I swear I don’t think quite that highly of myself—and that’s the secret? That I have to be tortured if I want to make anything worthwhile?”

“Wow. I’m not quite sure where to start.” She tucks a lock of hair behind one ear, exposing a tiny book-shaped earring. If I weren’t so distraught, I’d ask where she got it. “First of all, I want to give you an adamant no that you don’t have to be unhappy in order to create art. That’s bullshit. Maybe there is something of a history of tortured geniuses, people in pain making beautiful things. Maybe we as a culture have even romanticized it.”

I nod, thinking about how Neil, with his love of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, would know all about that.

“Every writer is different, of course. Are all writers perfectly well-adjusted human beings? Well, no. None of us are. But that doesn’t mean we’re all miserable, either. I wrote Thursday at Dawn when I was going through a rough patch, and it’s a very sad book. Then I wrote Helvetica when everything started to stabilize—and that’s the one you and I like the most. And I’m inclined to believe we’re right—I think it’s the better book. I was happier, I was healthier, I was taking care of myself, and I think it shows,” she says, and I wonder how that must feel for her rough-patch book to be the one beloved by critics. Complicated, I imagine. “Inspiration takes form in many different ways. Sometimes even I don’t understand it, but I’ve grown to trust the process.”

“What is it, then?” I ask. “Why am I so stuck? Why I am incapable of getting a decent grade on one of these assignments?”

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize that’s part of what I’ve been craving: the validation, the way it feels to see an A circled in red on top of a paper.

“Rowan. You should know by now that the assignments aren’t graded. Not on any kind of scale that you’re used to, at least.”

“But—but all the red,” I say. “You always scribble all over them. I feel like that wouldn’t be the case if I were actually getting an A.”

“I write that much on everyone’s assignments,” she says. “There’s a reason I emphasize participation in my class, and that can mean any number of things. I find that freshmen sometimes have a hard time letting go of perfection, this notion that whatever they put on the page needs to be instantly brilliant. Especially the ones who were high achievers in high school. There might be a bit of academic burnout there, and the last thing I want to do is add more stress.”

“Okay, fine,” I say. “But it doesn’t change the fact that everything I write comes out like absolute shit.”

Miranda’s voice is warm as ever but with a new firmness. “Nah,” she says. “I would love to see you write absolute shit, but you’re not there yet.”

I half laugh at this. “Are you making fun of me?”

She shakes her head. “It’s advice I’ve been given at a few stages of my own career. Sometimes we can get so in our heads that we think everything needs to be beautiful the moment it hits the page. I’ll build up a book for so long that once I start writing, I’m furious with myself that it doesn’t match the vision I have in my head.”

“Yes,” I say, nodding vigorously. “That’s exactly it. How do I get it to match that vision?”

“You don’t.” She says it flatly. Of all the encouraging things I thought she might say, I definitely never thought she’d agree with me. “You embrace the absolute shit. That’s why I do the freewrites. To get all of you out of your heads, to realize that writing is revising. Writing is rewriting. Nothing comes out beautifully the first time, except for maybe a handful of very unusual writers. Who we hate, naturally.”

“Naturally.”

“Most of the students in my classes are used to being told by their teachers that they’re good writers. They’re used to getting top grades. And I’m not here to drag you down or tank your GPA, but I want you to think about writing differently than you have in the past. You might have that compounded because of your relationship—the fact that you’re in love, so you should be able to write about love.”

“Write what you know,” I mutter.

“But that’s so much pressure,” she says. “Not to mention most of you are going through considerable emotional upheaval—leaving behind your homes, your safety, your comfort. Starting over in a new place.”

It would be so easy for her to sound patronizing, and yet all I feel is the deep compassion she has for teaching, for her students. Because that’s undeniably part of it, the onslaught of newness, ever-shifting beneath my feet.