Two authors decide to swap genres when they both get into writer's block one day. There's one issue, neither has any idea how to write the genre they were assigned.
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Phet "Boo" Thongdi is a horror writer with small notoriety online. He isn't the mo...
I stared at my notepad for an hour now with no ideas coming to mind. I got so desperate that I even searched online on how to write romance.
Maybe it was my writer's block. I couldn't be that incompetent at writing romance. Put two people in the same room and make them make kissy faces at each other. Done. That was all romance was, right?
I ran my hands through my hair as I stared at the blank chalkboard in front of me. The classroom was eerily quiet with the lack of students and it only intensified since the room was extremely spacious. Probably because I was here thirty minutes early but if I hadn't, I would be stuck waiting for my breakfast as swarms of students try to get their morning fixes of coffee.
"What's making you scrunch your face up like that?"
Angelo sat next to me with a Tim Horton's cup in hand. I was wondering why he didn't walk with me to our morning lecture but I hadn't questioned it.
"Just thinking," I mumbled. "It's too early to be here."
"Morning classes really are brutal."
He took a long sip of his coffee and I took in the calm stillness of the empty room.
It didn't last long as our professor slammed the door open and Angelo choked on his coffee.
Our professor was covered head to toe in mud, her glasses crooked on her face and her brown suitcase was in a death grip in the other hand. She didn't say anything as she walked towards the desk to the front of the class and threw the briefcase onto it. A trail of mud followed behind her as some even dripped from her ponytail. She was either not a morning person or she had a very rough morning.
"Um, Ms. Daily. Are you okay?" Angelo asked.
"I don't know what you're talking about." She opened her briefcase. "Also, I told you to call me Janice. If you call me Ms. Daily again, I will not respond."
"Right, sorry Janice," Angelo said awkwardly before sitting next to me.
He usually stuck around with his other friends but it looked like since we were both early, he had to make do with my company.
"I'm going to go to the bathroom. If I'm late, don't worry."
She left the room while Angelo and I watched. The door swung out from behind her and it slowly closed.
"I bet she was having a romantic encounter in the mud," Angelo said the moment the door was shut.
"What the fuck?" I shook my head. "She was obviously running away from something because something terrified her. She looked exhausted."
"Maybe she had a little too much fun with whoever she was messing around with."
"Before eight in the morning?" I dropped my head to give him a stare.
"Maybe it was a—"
I covered my ears. "I don't want to hear the next word that comes out of that mouth."
Janice eventually came back and the lecture continued as normal as it could've been.
The next class will probably be just as boring.
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"And my wife chased after the cat! I can't believe she did that! She insisted on coming to work anyways in her muddy outfit and I was like 'noooo, you'll get mud everywhere!' but she said that we were late for our train. We came like thirty minutes to campus early anyways but she really should've at least cleaned up a little. The people on the subway gave her the strangest looks!" Barbara spoke so fast but I clung to every word she said. "She only managed to convince me because she gave me the sweetest kiss after she put Mr. Fluffers back into the house and washed him."
We sat in another lecture hall and our professor, Barbara, paced back on forth in front of the class while fanning herself with her hand as she recalled the events from this morning. Her brown hair was tied into a ponytail and it swayed back and forth as she kept moving around.
Angelo had a smug smile on his face as he leaned over to me and I could already guess what he was going to say.
"See? Romance?" Angelo whispered.
"No, she was terrified," I whispered back. "The cat could've been killed if they didn't get him back in time. You don't even know if it's the same person she's talking about."
"She literally started the story with 'my wife who works here too' then went on to describe Janice down to the tiniest detail." He waved his hands in small circles to emphasize his point. "It's so obvious that they're the opposites attract trope."
"Oh my god, are you going to write fanfic of our profs?"
"No!" Angelo yelled and covered his mouth.
"Is everything alright there?" Barbara asked. Her head was tilted back to see the back of the lecture hall.
"Sorry! He almost dropped all of his stuff on the ground!" I yelled back. "We're okay!"
"Alright, be more careful!" Barbara chuckled. "Oh, that reminds me of the time..."
Barbara's voice faded in the background and I turned back to Angelo with a smug smile.
"I can't believe we share so many electives," he muttered under his breath.
I pretended not to hear what he just said and continued to scribble into my notebook. Opposites attract. Apparently, that was popular for romance books.
I stewed in my thoughts as I mulled over the type of romance story I could write.
Characters. I just needed characters to start with and everything should flow together.
I got this.
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