This Time I'll Write a RomCom

As she sat down to write, she found she had nothing to say.

For the third day in a row, she just sat there.

Staring.

Staring at her white screen.

A familiar pain on the left side of her head began to throb.

The pain that signaled:

She wasn’t getting anywhere.

She was stagnant.

Frozen.

Her mind began to drift, panic, and spiral.

She began to wonder, “What am I doing? Why am I Doing? What do I think will come of this? What is the Point? Do I really think that something will come from this? Obviously, nothing will come from this.”

She began to think back to three days ago.

Three days ago, when she had received her 40th rejection letter this month.

40th rejection letter this month.

For this month alone.

And in that letter was the same sentence that she had received in the previous 39 letters, “While this submission wasn’t for us, there is a lot we admire in your writing. Please consider submitting in the future.”

She tried to convince herself that this was a step up. It wasn’t the generic, “thanks but no thanks,” letter.

“There is a lot to admire in your writing,” was at least new-ish. A sign that she was headed in the right direction, right?

Right?

Right?

Maybe.

When she looked at who had been accepted, who had won, who had been selected instead of her, she noticed several things:

99% of those selected had MFAs in creative writing from prestigious universities.

99% of those selected already had representation.

99% of those selected had been accepted into almost every single opportunity she had applied to.

They were the same people.

All the time.

The same people all the time getting accepted.

And, good for them.

Really.

Good for them.

She knew it was a journey.

To get to where they were.

She knew that they had probably worked really hard and received just as many rejection letters before getting to the point they were at now.

So, it wasn’t them she was frustrated with.

It was the people doing the selecting.

Who were these people that claimed to not care about resumes, and prestige, and representation but then oh so coincidentally accepted people with fancy degrees who already had representation? Who had lengthy resumes from fancy programs?

She knew what she sounded like.

Disgruntled, slighted, complaining (brat).

“Maybe it’s what you write,” she thought.

Maybe no one wants to hear about people getting kidnapped by ICE, or forced sterilizations that had happened to almost every single marginalized community in the country and were committed in California as recently as the early 2000s, or the rising counts of femicide all over the world.

Her writing was overtly political.

She knew that.

She wondered if it was bad.

“Maybe it’s just bad,” she thought, “Maybe you should just stop writing and call it a day.”

But then there was that sentence.

That kind, but infuriating sentence, “there is much to admire in your writing.”

Much to admire.

But not enough.

And these people who were getting accepted, what were they writing about?

Self-discovery. Self-discovery later in life. Starting over later in life. Unlikely friendships. Unlikely friendships later in life. Having children. Having children later in life.

Nothing getting accepted was “political.”

Not really.

“It’s what people want,” she thought.

People want stories about the possibility of starting over.

Of course, they did.

The world was burning.

The world IS burning.

And no wants to read about it.

Not really.

People want to read about hope.

About having a baby at 45 years old.

About still getting laid at 75 years old.

About getting a divorce and rediscovering who you are at 85 years old.

People want to know there’s a chance.

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

And most of her writing-

All of her writing-

Didn’t do that.

Most of her writing-

All of her writing-

Told people to get the hell up.

To pay attention.

To get angry.

She was pissed.

About so many things.

So, she wrote about them.

And she thought they were good?

They were good.

But not good enough.

Or-

Not palatable enough.

No one wanted to escape into her stories.

She glanced down at the time on her laptop.

She’d been staring at a blank screen for an hour and a half.

“Ok,” she thought, “I’m going to write about human connection. About self-discovery. I’ll write a romcom but with my own twist. A romcom about self-love. Maybe the female protagonist realizes she really doesn’t want children and is happy being a single mid to late 30-something living in LA. Or maybe I’ll write about an unlikely friendship between an older woman and her young child neighbor who makes her see the beauty in life again. Yea. Cool.”

But then her phone dinged, and she saw an alert from her local ICE-Watch group that there was a rumor that ICE was on their way to her local Home Depot.

She immediately closed her laptop, put on her shoes and grabbed her keys.

Got into her car and drove the 5 minutes to the Home Depot.

When she arrived, she pulled out her phone and began recording.

She recognized most of the men being dragged by heavily armed ICE agents into the unmarked vehicles, because she had spent the last year getting to know almost everyone who came into this parking lot looking for work. She would call the National Day Laborer Center after it was over so they could send word to the families as soon as possible. She fought every bone in her body not to throw everything she had in her car at the ICE agents. She knew it would only make things worse. She needed to be a witness. She needed to memorize every face getting thrown into these vehicles so she could share the devastating information with their families so they could lawyer up and get them free as quickly as they could.

But then, one agent approached her and asked her to stop filming.

She said she wasn’t interfering and had every right to record.

The agent grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back.

She screamed.

The agent threw her on the ground,

And her head hit the asphalt.

Hard.

The last thing she thought before she lost consciousness was, "If I don't die, this'll make a great short story."