I said, “I want to write a novel. But I don’t know what to write.” Mom told me try to put myself in it and maybe that’d make it easier. I told her she didn’t know what she was talking about. This isn’t Adaptation. “It’s not that easy,” I said. I screamed it, actually. I exclaimed it. It’s…not that easy. She says it is. I disagree. We disagree over and over before dropping the matter altogether.

We’re in the kitchen discussing the matter. The kitchen is in Philly. I’m trying to write a novel, but I have no idea. I have no ideas. Plural. No idea that’s original. My mom tells me stop. Think. Sit. Just stop. I tell her it’s not that easy. It’s…not that easy. We disagree over and over before dropping the matter altogether. We drop so many matters. Altogether.

We sit at the table and brainstorm.

Mom asks, “What do you want to write about?” I’m 19. She says, “Kayla, what do you want to write about?”

“I don’t know mom, that’s the problem!” She doesn’t understand. She’ll never understand. “I want to write about me… But not with me in it.”

She sighs. She laughs. “You want to write about you.”

“Not about me, but someone like me. I mean, something someone like me would read.”

I pause. I stare, suck teeth. “You get it?”

“Write about you.”

It’s not that easy.