Page 38 of Not a Friend (Crescent Light #1)
One Year Ago, January
I still miss you.
T he final month to work on the Newbie Comp project started with scrambling.
Through my months of research, I’d managed to compile a list of eight artists who were all excellent candidates for what I wanted to do.
I’d developed an encyclopedic knowledge of each of them, everything from their history, discography, from where they pulled inspiration, the members, and their various skills.
Of those eight, I’d managed to see five of them live, and there were still two more I had tickets to see before my draft deadline.
The goal was to narrow down my list to the groups I felt represented what kind of hidden gems the area had to offer.
The pure gold yet undiscovered in greater New England.
In a perfect world, I would have had the forethought to try and set up interviews with each of the artists, but the impending deadline made that almost impossible to pull off.
I mentally kicked myself, thinking the intimate interviews might’ve offered the insight I needed to push my project ahead of everyone else’s for consideration .
When it came time to put pen to paper and start composing the first draft of my article, I struggled more than I expected.
How was I supposed to write about something I personally cared about without letting my personal biases and musical preferences sway the result?
Of course, my preferences would play a small role, but the technicalities of the music should shine more than my personal preference.
To succeed at The Mountain as a serious writer, I needed to flex the skill of separating my taste from acknowledging talent, regardless of whether I personally liked it.
You don’t have to be a fan of metal, hip-hop, or pop to be able to objectively recognize artists in those genres as being outstanding in their craft.
In the end, I tightened my list to five artists who offered something a little different from the other and whose talents I felt I could stand behind when it came time to deliver the final result.
Five artists who had the potential to contribute greatly to the music industry if they had the eyes and ears of the right people, and who fans would adore.
Crescent Light was on it.
I practically locked myself in my apartment the final two weeks before the project deadline.
I stayed in Boston for Christmas and fleshed out all the criteria I based my research on, and exactly why I chose each of the artists.
I explained why each of them was uniquely different than what was already on the market while still maintaining a marketability that would allow them to thrive if given the right platform.
The final version of the project was meant to be fifteen hundred words. My first draft was over three thousand. Thus began edits as I slowly whittled down the resulting document to stay within my required word count.
Kieran helped keep me sane during those weeks when I was just too busy to make time to see him.
While he was visiting his family in Maryland for the holidays, I was cooped up at my kitchen table, exhaustively reading and rereading all my research, when my phone pinged.
It was a picture. A screenshot from a food delivery service and my address listed as the destination with an order from a protein bowl takeout place a few blocks away. A moment later, I received a text.
Kieran
Just making sure you’re staying fed while you grind away
He even showed up unexpectedly at my apartment when he got back to Boston after New Year’s a few days later.
“Put on something warm. We’re going on a walk,” he demanded with a cheeky smile the second I answered the door.
“Hello to you, too,” I laughed.
He crossed the threshold, his cheeks pink and flushed from the cold. “Hi.”
The miserable Boston winter had thankfully relented in the last day, offering forty-eight full hours of only mildly-torturous temperatures before the next wave of harsh winter weather was forecasted to hit.
“When did you get back?”
“Late last night.” Kieran stooped, giving me a quick peck on the lips. “I mean it, go change your clothes.”
I scoffed, holding my arms out to gesture at my sweatpants and the open laptop on the kitchen table. “I can’t leave. I told you I have to work on my article.”
He stepped forward, crowding me, to put his big hands on my shoulders and give me a supercilious look .
“It’s not so important that you can’t take an hour to breathe some fresh air, Olive. It’ll be good to walk away and clear your head.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Come on, let’s go. You’ll thank me later.”
I stood stubbornly still, my chin tilted up.
But then I thought about how many days it had been since I’d last left my apartment, seen the sun, felt the wind.
Three days, at least. I’d had a sudden bout of self-doubt two nights before and had completely scrapped my draft.
I’d been working around the clock to get it back to a comfortable place while maintaining my regular workload.
My shoulders sagged, relenting because I knew he had a point.
“It is important,” I corrected him, “but, fine.”
This is what I get for dating a fitness guy.
I stalked to my bedroom and squealed when he pinched my ass to make me hurry up. I changed quickly into a pair of jeans and a thick sweater, slipped my woolen-socked feet into a pair of sneakers, and pulled on a coat hanging by the door.
He was right, of course. The walk was great, not only for my stiff legs and back that suffered from sitting at my computer for days on end, but also for getting out of the mental vacuum I was stuck in.
Plus, it was nice to feel Kieran’s big hand in mine as we walked side by side through the park near Full Circle Coffee.
His hair stuck out from under the beanie he wore, the blue material a stark contrast to his rosy, wind-burnt cheeks.
Despite his towering, muscular frame, he reminded me of a little boy who’d been out playing in the snow for too long.
“Don’t you feel a little better now?” he asked as we ascended the stairs back up to my apartment, fresh, hot drinks in hand from Full Circle—black coffee for him, tea for me .
I thanked him for his consideration in my bedroom over the next half hour.
The next day, I pored over my new and improved project draft.
I’d chipped away at the words little by little to reach the word requirement, paring everything down while still maintaining the integrity, the essence, the soul of the project itself.
It felt like an impossible ask—conveying everything I’d learned in the past months while still doing it justice in so few words—but I’d done it.
I had a sense of connection now to these artists. I felt like I owed it to them, to readers of The Mountain , and to myself, to make it as meaningful as possible. Even if it never got to see the light of day, I had to try.
It’ll never be perfect , I reminded myself.
I knew I was never going to be completely satisfied with it. But I gave myself fleeting moments to be proud.
I rewrote the entire thing again, highlighting what resonated most and reworking bits that could be edited further. I read and reread and reread again a thousand times, finding small edits and fine-tuning until I was, for the most part, happy with what I had.
I spent another two days formatting and titling the thing, battling back and forth in my head how to summarize something that took over my thoughts for over four months into one eye-catching title.
“You can go for something simple?” Kieran suggested from my living room couch as he lounged, watching football. “Maybe you’re overthinking it.”
“Simple, you say?” I deadpanned, not looking up from my computer .
“Yeah. I mean, a lot of magazine articles I see are pretty straightforward. Look at this,” he leaned up to grab the latest edition of a horrifically patriarchal magazine that also happened to be one of my guiltiest pleasures, which was sitting on the coffee table in front of him.
“ Ten Things To Do With Your Tongue That Will Drive Him Nuts… Literally! ” He read in an exaggerated tone.
“It’s simple, straightforward, and now I’m dying to open this bad boy up and see what exactly those ten things are.
And, if I should ask you very nicely to do any of them.
” He flipped the cover open and leafed through the pages.
“You may be onto something.” I laughed.
Taking a deep breath, I tossed the idea around in my head. I typed a few test titles in that format, bobbing my head from side to side, feeling each of them out.
“Okay, please do number six, though,” Kieran said over his shoulder. “Like, please . I’m begging.”
He laughed when I shushed him and went back to perusing the article.
Five Artists You Should Know: A Look Into New England’s Underground Music Scene By Olive McLaren
I didn’t hate it. In fact, I kind of loved it.
It summed up what the article held without being too self-referential or giving too much away.
Just a taste to prompt readers to say hmm and hopefully read more, like Kieran did with the weird tongue article.
I stared at the title, reading it again and again until I was sure it felt right .
“Okay,” I sighed deeply, stretching my arms over my head before rising from my chair. I padded to the back of the couch where Kieran sat and held my hand out. “Let me see what number six is.”
“Fuck yes .”