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buffet, I noticed the man who had been watching us. He stood in the back of the gallery, arms crossed, talking to Mrs. Haverson, newly appointed Dean of Arts and Sciences. He was dressed in black and wore rings on both hands. The way he pulled his hair from his face and twisted a rubber band around the ponytail was almost effeminate—it was certainly an overly casual gesture for someone talking to the dean. Watching him, I felt something different than attraction. I felt curiosity.
    “You’re being awfully quiet,” Everett said. “Did I upset you?”
    “I’m fine,” I said. “Just thinking.”
    To my surprise, Zoë appeared beside the stranger. I felt a twinge of annoyance; had she told me she’d changed her mind about coming, I would not have dragged Everett along.
    “No more talk of publishing and does it matter,” Everett declared, shoving a plastic plate into my hands. “It will throw us into existential crisis. I say let’s eat cheese and be merry.”
    Zoë was whispering something in the man’s ear. I watched them, suspiciously; Zoë was a decided flirt, but she’d kept herself more or less in check since Michael had come along.
    The man scanned the room until his eyes fixed on me. He smiled and waved. Idiotically, I lifted my palm in a brief hello. I sensed I knew him, but couldn’t remember his name.

    Theoretically—ethically—teachers should be like parents, parceling out equal care for all their kids without favoritism. But truth be told, I loved my creative writers best. They came to class in their pajamas and didn’t e-mail me much. On a particularly good day, they even raised their hands to talk in class.
    Friday the students shuffled into class sullen and pale. We had reached the point in the semester where the novelty of being back on campus had worn off and the promise of Christmas break was still too far away to incite hope.
    “The actual act of writing is a very private thing.” I paced the front of the room, hoping the movement would wake them up. “But the private act of writing is only half the life of a story or a book. Its other half is the life it lives for its audience.” On the board I wrote imaginary audience . “Who is it you see in your mind when you sit down to write?” I asked. “What faces—what crowds—do you write for?”
    We discussed the many audiences we saw in our minds when we wrote: editors in offices in great cities, professors with their red pens, peer reviewers, family, friends.
    “Sometimes these people can hinder our voice,” I said. “How many times when you are writing do you hold back for fear of what your mom would say if she read it? Or for fear of what a professor will say about your style? In today’s reading, Lamott points out that you have to free your mind from the burden of that critical audience. To write what it is you need to write.”
    Lillian Finelley, a varsity cheerleader whom I suspected of taking the class for an easy A, raised her hand. “Who’s our audience then?”
    “Yourself. God. Someone kind and forgiving.”
    “But don’t authors write for specific audiences?” Mary Beth asked. She planned to be a poet. It was clear that she resented having to agree with Lillian, but she kept on. “I mean, if you write for children you write for children, not for yourself. Or if you write romance, you write for a certain public.”
    “Of course we all write to audiences,” I agreed. “And, yes, any given genre is compelled to meet its audience’s expectations. But what I’m saying is maybe we get so busy trying to please a target audience that we miss the very story we have worth telling.”
    They were listening intently, but were skeptical.
    “How about this,” I said, regrouping. “Would you keep writing even if no one read your work?”
    I studied each face in turn. One offered a sympathetic smile, another frowned to prove he was thinking. Few met my gaze. Lonnie Weis stared, but Lonnie always stared. Mostly at my