Page 20 of Writing Mr. Right

“You don’t even know what they are yet.”

“I don’t need to know,” he replies. “They’re ideas you’ve come up with, so they’re wonderful.”

I huff. “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one putting your heart on the line.”

He tilts his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

I dig my nails into my palm. “Writing is putting yourself out there for the whole world to perceive,” I say. “It’s like, the most embarrassing thing to be on full display—the world will either hate you or validate you.”

Aashiq hums for a moment. “What you’re feeling is perfectly normal,” he says. “But you shouldn’t self-reject by thinking twenty steps into the future. Take things one at a time, which starts with sharing your ideas with me so I can help.” He raises the notebook in our hands again. The same sincerity he stared at me with in the rain returns, though it’s much less intense this time. “Will you let me help you?”

After a long moment, I lift my fingers up, one at a time. His responding grin warms my insides, and he flips the notebook open. Then he goes and sits on my bed.

He’s silent for a few minutes, and as each second passes my stomach ties into knot after knot. Oh, God, what if he thinks the ideas are terrible? What if he thinks it’s better for him to cut his losses and let me fend for myself? Great, he impossibly comes into my life, reignites my hopes and my passion, and now he’s going to leave. That’s just wonder—

“These are really good,” Aashiq finally says.

Immediately, all the tension leaves my body. Right. Of course. I knew I didn’t have anything to worry about.

“How do you feel about the idea where the veterinarian and her older brother’s best friend have a marriage of convenience?” he asks.

I shake my head. “That one sucks.”

He frowns but moves on. “Okay…how about the one wherethe baker has to save her parents’ restaurant with the help of her former high school nemesis?”

“No. That one sucks, too.”

“What about the one where the elementary school teacher falls for her student’s widowed father?”

I stick my tongue out like I’m gagging. “I can’t believe I evenconsideredthat one.”

Aashiq drops the notebook into his lap. “Why are you being so hard on your ideas?” He stares at me in disbelief. “You’re the one who came up with them.”

“Because…” I grit my teeth, my mind drifting back to Rachel’s words. “People don’t want these ideas.”

“What do you mean?”

“These are all quiet stories,” I reply. “Low stakes. They don’t have pizzazz.”

Aashiq is quiet for another moment. He only speaks when I finally peek up at him from underneath my lashes. “Ziya, you can write whatever you want. You don’t need to worry about having pizzazz. You can write a pizzazzless book.”

I snort. “I used to think that, too.” I plop down next to him on the bed. “It’s why I wrote those ideas down. I thought I’d be able to do whatever I wanted. But I guess that’s not true.”

Aashiq stares at me for a moment, then glances back down at my notebook. He closes it and tosses it behind us. “Okay, I have an idea. For now, let’s not launch right into a new book.”

A deep sigh pushes through my nose. “Thank God. But what do we do instead?”

“Something else.” He gets up from the bed, then goes over to my desk. He digs through it for a second, but it doesn’t take long for him to pull out one of my many empty notebooks—when I bought them, I swore I’d use them for writing. He plucks a pretty pen from my holder, then turns around and places both items in my lap.

I wrinkle my nose. “What do you want me to do with these?”

“We’re going back to basics,” Aashiq explains, dipping his chin with enthusiasm. “You’re going to be writing, but you won’t write actual fiction. For now, anything youcanwrite down, youwillwrite down. That includes journaling, writing affirmations, goals for the day, to-do lists. Anything that comes to your mind that can be put to paper but isn’t fiction-related, you’re going to write.”

I frown. “Uh, I literally never do any of that stuff,” I tell him. “It also sounds kind of dumb and sentimental.”

Aashiq splutters. “You’re questioning the sentimentality of writing?” he says. “Every great story in existence was born of sentimentality. All good art is feeling. It’s tenderness, sadness, nostalgia.”

“And how does writing a to-do list fit into this?”

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