The Roughest Draft

by Emily Wibberley

Reading and loving books are the fingerprints of who I am—no matter how much I change, they’ll stay the same, betraying me to myself for the rest of my life.

The ice in my drink shifts suddenly, tumbling down like it’s punctuating her point.

i just love this sentence

I smile, recognizing my own descriptions plagiarized on my mouth.

Fiction comes from truth. It is a wonderful, imaginative, flourishing thing grown from a seed of real feelings, real desires, real fears. No artist ever creates from nothing. We work from what we’ve experienced, inspired by the unique piece of the world we see. It’s why art cannot be replicated.

I love even our roughest draft. I love every fraught page we’ve rewritten to get to here. Because in the end, the best part of a love story isn’t having it. It’s getting to keep writing.