“Which is a problem.” Running a hand over my face, I take a deep breath, trying to quell the panic building in my chest. I close my eyes, counting my breaths before I explain. “My last album was sad. My last album was my woman-scorned breakup album. This one is supposed to be a love album,” I remind him, something he is well aware of since he wrote what will become the lead single.
In December, Adam, an incredibly talented songwriter, brought me a song he believed would be perfect for me. I immediately fell in love with it.Are You Mine?is all romance, all the butterflies of having a crush, of being unsure, of falling in love, and realizing they feel the same. When I heardAre You Mine?, I knew I needed it on my next album. I’m known well for writing most of my own songs, so while it’s the perfect start, the perfect song to set the tone for the album, I need to write the rest of the songs myself.
At first, I was on tour, and when I sat down to write in my limited free time and found no inspiration, I figured it was because I was too busy. I was running from interview to meeting to practice to meet-and-greet to performance, each day in anew place, a new city. I didn’t pay it much mind, even though in the past I’d always been able to write, no matter where I was. Instead, I made a vision board, a spread of words and photos and colors and even textures to inspire me, which is now hanging over my computer in my music room.
As I stare at it, once again, I know it’s perfect, the exact vision I have for the album: a light, airy, love ballad-filled album about being afraid of love, finding it, and then being desperate to keep it. A color palette of pastel pinks and purples and blues and greens, a clipping of hands being held, a still of a couple passionately kissing. A couple of intimate snaps of a hand on a thigh, fingers indenting skin, of teeth on a lip.
Infatuation and love and attraction and need. That’s the vibe for this album. Now it just needs to get written.
But I’ve been home now for two weeks and…nothing.
Not a song, not a lyric, not even a usable melody has come to me. Yesterday, I asked Adam if he could hop on a coworking call with me for a couple of hours to see if he could help shake some inspiration loose, but the call is now going on three hours, and I have nothing to show for it, other than a pile of crumpled-up papers and the anxiety stirring in my bones.
“I don’t get it. I’m doing everything I normally do. I’m working out, I’m reading, I’m going through old notes. I’m meditating and journaling and spending at least three hours a day trying to write, but I’ve got nothing to show for it.” He looks at me assessingly, head tipping to the side just a hair before he speaks with a gentleness I don’t expect from him.
“Maybe that’s your problem. You’re trying too hard. You’re too structured. Maybe you need to change up your routine.”
Panic shoots through me at the mere suggestion.
“My routines are what help me write,” I murmur, protective of the routines I’ve created. I like the predictability of a routine.
Routines are familiar.
Routines feel safe.
Routines help me stay in my groove.
Routines mean I am in control.
“Normally,” Adam says, lifting a shoulder in a halfhearted gesture. “But maybe that’s changed. Maybeyouneed a change.” I scrunch up my nose, trying to push down how the mere idea of change unsettles me, and a chuckle fills the room. “I get it. I’ve been there, Will. Trust me. I was going on six months of no writing with my last block.” My head snaps up, giving him wide eyes.
“Six months?”He nods, and I sit back, floored. Writing is as natural to Adam as it is to me. He, Riggins, and Stella Greene are the only people I’ve ever been able to write with, since they have the same consuming need to get words on paper as I do. “What did you do?”
“I panicked, for one. Tried to write even more, wasted time, paper, and energy I didn’t have. I stressed enough to burn a hole in my stomach, I’m sure. Then I tried moving from LA to New York. Tried using a typewriter. I ran a fuck-ton. Watched movies, listened to music, and read books. Tried to…I don’t know. Find myself? I cut myself off from everyone and everything.”
I think about the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on craft supplies, about the vision board I made, about the fancy notebooks that I’ve bought, thinking they might help, and the extra Pilates classes I added to my routine.
“But then I moved to Holly Ridge.” He shrugs when I raise an eyebrow at him. “It was a random, spur-of-the-moment decision, but the best one I ever made. Maybe that’s what you need.”
“To move to a small town on a whim and fall in love? I’m sure Jackie and Leo would justlovethat,” I say. He rolls his eyes through the screen and shakes his head.
“No, I don’t think you need to up and leave everything you know. But maybe a change of scenery would help.”
“I just came off a world tour,” I grumble, drawing hearts in the margins of a piece of paper. “And I couldn’t write while I was there. Not sure how a change of scenery would help.” I know I’m being stubborn, and I know that he’s just trying to help, and I’m grateful when he isn’t irritated or offended by my arguments. Instead, he just shrugs knowingly.
“You may have been somewhere else physically, but at the end of the day, it was the same old, same old. Maybe change of scenery was the wrong word—You need a change of pace. Maybe you need to… I don’t know. Disappear. Go somewhere new and just be…you. Not Willa Stone, the pop star. Willa Stone, the person.” That knot in my stomach grows, swirling inward until I feel suffocated by it.
The truth is, I have no ideawhoI am without my external personality, without the version the world knows. I’ve been here for so long, grown into her, that I don’t actually think thereisa different version of myself hiding away.
But that’s embarrassing to admit, to tell someone that there is no deeper version of yourself than the superficial one you’ve created to please those around you.
So, instead, I give him the logical answer.
“I don’t think there’s anywhere I can hide without having to be on all the time.”
“You can in Holly Ridge,” he says, with a small smile. “The Atlas Oaks guys were here not long ago; no one bothered them.” I take in the sincerity in his voice, but don’t speak. “If you ever want to come, get away for a bit, I’ve got a guest room you’re more than welcome to. It’s not luxury, but it’s comfy, and Wren makes great cookies.” His voice softens when he mentions his girlfriend, the muse forAre You Mine?, and I smile at that, so happy my friend has this… has found this.
Simultaneously, something ugly twists in my chest, something I recognize as jealousy, and I hate it. In an effort not to dwell on it, I nod. “I’ll let you know. Maybe I’ll come for a day, and we can write together in person. Maybe that will help knock this block out.”
