i enjoy writing to a brief. ESP if the brief is specific and limited. by "enjoy" i mean i dont actively hate it as much as i do the process of writing something that i want to write. i have not struggled with writing for other people, commercial writing etc because the activity is specific and i dont have to think too much about my own likes and dislikes and whatnot.
so i get ai to make super specific prompts for me [often based on market research on white spaces] and try to write say 3 to 5k words in response.
when i do so my cutoff for myself is i should like the writing- i dont need to like the characters, the genre or the scene but i should think the writing is not bad. this is mainly what i use ai for. to create frustrating prompts for myself to practice writing things that dont feel natural/dont feel like what i would otherwise write about.
the prompt was to write a second chances romance with a south asian protagonist. this is the first chapter-
CHAPTER 1
I gave him a second chance. He dumped me and wrote a song about it. The song went platinum. It was called, [wait for it], "Coffee Girl." Fuck my life.
And have you heard? His follow-up single is called "Golden Girl." It's about a girl with gold hair and a laugh like a bell. I have black hair and when I think something is funny I make a sound that I have recently identified, via Instagram reels of baby pigs, as a piglet snort. The reels are my main lifeline. I watch them at 2am. Watch is passive. I consume them. I hang on to them for dear life. The pigs don't know who Jove is.
The lady is still looking at me. Right.
"Oh, I think we just kind of went our ways, you know. But I wish him the best — he seems so happy! I'm happy he's happy," I say, angling toward my escape.
I try to make a smooth exit, shimmying my way through the tables toward the kitchen door. I fail. I am definitely going to have a bruise on my hips from the table I banged into on the way out. I'm almost in the clear — so close I can taste the sweet, sweet cement stench of dish pit steam and someone else's leftover salmon — when I hear it.
So close.
"Excuse me — I just had to ask. Are you Meera? Like, Jove's Meera?"
There it is.
I turn around and face my attacker. My cheeks hurt from my too-wide grin, and I suddenly realize I have cavities that probably need attending to, because the air feels like it is actually moving between my teeth, which I don't remember it ever doing before.
"Yeah, I think I might be," I say in a high-pitched, cheery voice. "And he looks so happy these days, doesn't he? I'm so happy for him. I'm happy he's happy." Basic combat strategy. You can't be ambushed if you are already on the ground.
She blinks. I broke her. I just defused the bomb by sitting on it. Didn't see that coming, did ya.
I take the opening, pick up her empty glass, and say, "Why don't I get you another one of these?"
The kitchen is the aftermath of a battle that clearly nobody won. There are a dozen half-eaten canapés on the pass, and someone has left an installation of champagne flutes in a configuration that I, as a professionally trained artist, can only describe as a cri de help-e.
Kavya, who has been waitressing here for three years and has the death in her eyes to prove it, looks up when I push through the door.
"How bad?"
"Jove's Meera."
She winces. Two months in the trenches together. She speaks fluent this again.
I grab a fresh tray and catch my reflection in the steel facade of the fridge. The mob cap is askew. My curls put up a fight and, like me, failed after doing only some damage. I try to tuck them back. I give up. What's the point. I'm wearing a fucking mob cap. This is clearly rock bottom. Now would be a good time to die of the consumption.
I go back out into the Bridgerton-themed garden party. There is a giant, ugly board with gilded writing that says "Welcome to the Ton!" in gratuitously loopy cursive that was clearly lifted off a Canva template.
The theme was the event coordinator's idea of a fun time. She is, in her own words, a fan of trad romances, whatever that means. I blame Netflix personally, and someday I shall sue them for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The historically ambiguous hellscape, otherwise known as the ton party, stretches out before me and I shimmy through it. Shimmying is really all I can do in this outfit. Did the help wear skirts this tight in the 1800s?
Girls in full Georgian attire smash tiny balls with mallets and laugh maniacally. I start moving towards them and quickly change my mind. I'm not brave enough to go near drunk young influencers with long-handled mallets, so I turn toward the gazebo.
The estate is beautiful in October. Immaculate and effortless in the way that only things that take immense care are. I watch the willow trees swaying in the breeze and am struck, beyond the noise and my uncomfortably tight costume, by what an absolute privilege it is to be here. To witness this.
I would suffer a hundred tons to be near this garden.
At the far end of the lawn, where the willow trees give way to the hedgerow, there is a man in a grey t-shirt and work trousers working with a length of rope and a wooden stake. He drives the stake into the ground with a mallet, checks it, adjusts it slightly, drives it again.
He does this with the complete absorption of someone so lost in their work that the rest of the world, for a moment, ceases to exist. I feel a sharp pang. When was the last time I was like this? Lost to the world, hunched over a table with a tool. Poised in front of an easel. Even just lost in an absent-minded doodle over a grocery bill.
I watch him for longer than I mean to.
There is something mesmerizing about watching someone do what they were meant to do. His muscles strain under the heft of the mallet and I watch them — part admiration [I may be in a mob cap but I ain't a nun], part jealousy.
"Capital idea, darling," someone shouts behind me, in what I can only assume was an attempt at a Regency accent.
The spell breaks. He turns his head sharply and finds my eyes.
Fuck. My. Life.
Maybe I should consider becoming a nun.
[process note- i was thinking about these books and movies where a pop star or movie star ex moves back into their small town/is visiting and runs into someone they used to date before they got famous. i was also thinking about the meg cabots detective series [size 12 is not fat] where the protagonist used to be a teen pop star herself and has an ex who is a pop star [for some reason i imagined justin timberlake] who is messy and a little bit of a douche and maybe writes about her/talks about her in an interview . this got me thinking about the subjects of pop star songs and that evolved into the plot idea- this girl who is some kind of visual artist who used to date a guy who becomes a famous pop star [and whose main hit song is like this ode to her] and the second chance romance is actually with a guy who called out the famous guy for being the worst. ]