Page 17 of The Deepest Lake
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“I never had a mentor,” Eva tells me after I’ve made the embarrassing little video, which she doesn’t review. She seemed happy just to watch me make it—camera panning slowly across the book cover and the view, talking about what her book meant to me.
I’m all nerves, trying not to ask too many questions as I fumble with my phone and her laptop, getting the video transferred and posted as she observes, making use of autofill passwords and knowing I’ll have to get my own Mac up and running with all these accounts ASAP, because Eva is already talking about what she’d like me to do today: catch up on the week of email, do a PayPal transfer but only after I talk to someone named Barbara, talk to the hotel in San Felipe but only after I’ve talked to someone named Hans, talk to some restaurant manager in Antigua.
“Oh, and with social, don’t forget that you’re not done once you post. It’s the comments that take up the time. If we’re not engaging, it’s pointless having the content.”
“Engaging?”
“Reply to people’s comments—not everyone’s, just the first, to reward readers who keep me in their notifications. And don’t just ‘like’ them. Four words or more, so you affect the algorithm. But you probably know all this, at your age.”
I don’t, actually. “So, you want me to reply to people as . . . myself?”
“You reply as me. That’s the point. We’re turning readers into fans, and fans into superfans.”
Of course.
She warns me, furthermore, that the Wi-Fi is only strong in certain places around the house, but even so, the signal is variable, plus it can just plain flicker off for hours.
“Is there anything we can do about that?”
“You mean, like relocate to somewhere that’s not Guatemala?” She lets loose a long, pleased honk of laughter.
“Never mind,” I say, unable to resist smiling in response. “Right.”
“And don’t leave anyone hanging. Between the airport and the Antigua hotel and the launch and the cabins, women get nervous. That’s why we send them all those instructions.” She chuckles again. “If only they would read them!”
Those instructions. (Find them.) Antigua hotel. (Which one?) Launch. (She must mean the dock at Pana.) Cabins. (Must be the ones closest to the San Felipe dock.)
She’s treating me as if I’ve already attended the workshop, as if I will intuitively grasp the schedule and all the possible problems on the horizon. Mundane details like shuttles, allergies and special requests seem to bore her, understandably. She’d much rather talk memoir, which is incredible. When I’m not staring at the hummingbirds and straining to memorize her every word and trying to pinpoint why the coffee is so good—is it cinnamon?—I’m pinching myself.
You did it, Jules. You walked right in and you did it.
Eva sets down her empty coffee glass. She runs a hand through her blond tresses. “But let’s talk about your writing,” she says, still refusing to sit. “And I’ll want to read it of course! All that other stuff will get done, but you came to Lake Atitlán for the same reason everyone does, because it’s inspirational.”
She wants to read my writing.
I keep trying to keep my expectations in check, to not let my brain get stuck on the “M” word too soon. Because jobs are easy to get. Mentors are something else. And yet, Eva already used the word.
Eva paces, musing about the challenges of memoir and what she wishes someone would have told her when she was only seventeen, trying to figure it out on her own. “Never forget, you’re both the author and the narrator of your story. The first is obvious. The second is more complicated.”
“Yes,” I say, so desperate for something to write on that I’ve opened to a blank page at the back of my Lonely Planet guidebook and started scribbling notes there.
“And as far as who ‘you’ the narrator are, which ‘you’ is that? Speaking from what distance to the event? With how much knowledge? In what voice? I know you’ve taken some writing classes. This may seem basic.”
“Oh, not at all.”
“You have a lot of choices as a narrator,” she continues. “For example, when to insert reflection. When to show or tell. Most important: what to leave out.”
“I can’t leave out much,” I say, making a weak joke. “I’m only twenty-two. Twenty-three in a week.”
She cocks her head. “That book of mine you love. I published it at the age of nineteen. Do you really think I left nothing out?”
Of course I know that.
“We leave almost everything out. That’s the secret. Here,” she says, finally noticing that I’ve been writing inside a guidebook. “We give locally handmade journals to the participants on the first full day. Welcome and enjoy.” From a stack of fabric-covered books on the bench behind her, she takes a blank journal and puts it in my hands.