A Summer at Amazon Books by Rachael Allen You walk into a bookstore. Something is different, you think. You pay for a cold brew from Peet’s Coffee & Tea, located in the rear of the store, then walk around, assessing. Perhaps it’s the orientation of the books: they all face out, squared shoulders, as if presenting their best selves to a potential new owner. Perhaps it’s the black review cards tacked below each book, giving you booklover22’s opinion on why All the Light We Cannot See was so moving. Perhaps it’s the devices zone in the middle of the store. A couple pokes at a tablet, while a little boy dances to Ed Sheeran, whose music is now spouting from the voice-activated speaker, per his request. Perhaps, too, it’s your awareness of the store name…

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I’ve been studying in Italy for over two months, and have become a journaler. I’ve become a dedicated one too, sitting down to write for almost an hour each day in these flexible canvas-covered, orange-detailed notebooks I purchase from a bookstore off Bologna’s main street. In these journals, I recap my day. I write about the food I ate. I spiral into analyzing my emotions, then pick myself up with a second-person pep talk, occasionally feeling strongly enough to address myself by name. I am glad my Italian roommates don’t understand English well nor know the spot in the second drawer of my bedside table where I stack the journals, beside a jar of Skippy peanut butter from home and my monthly food allowance. What are these journals worth, really? Are they worth all the…

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Time moves differently when I’m home from college. An hour at home means deciding what to do, watching two Food Network episodes at my grandparents’ house, driving to the beach, or puttering out half-sentences at my computer that I tell myself I’ll finish later. An hour at school means completing a homework assignment, attending a newspaper meeting, reveling in this unusually lengthy chunk of free time, or simply talking with roommates right before bed, making me lose sleep but feel the good tired of a full day. This discrepancy in time is a welcome product of summer and its lazy days of food excess, television and marathon reading (most recently for me, Emma Cline’s The Girls and, of course, the latest Harry Potter). It’s also a product of place. School is an academic environment of…

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[Photo: Manhattan. Which box do you choose?] I want to be a writer. Well, what do you want to write? Novels, short stories, articles? Academic papers, scripts, speeches, songs? English, Italian, Spanish, marketing materials, instructional manuals? I don’t know. Moreover, I don’t want to choose right now. And yet, in declaring a major, in finding summer jobs, in approaching the time when I will no longer have school to define myself by, it feels as though I have to choose—at least momentarily, to shroud that indecisiveness that jitters inside me. In part, my confusion seems to fulfill the generalizations of an English major and perhaps, moreover, a liberal arts student—you do not have a set career path, you will not make much money. Even if you do find that sweet spot of a job, they…

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Editor’s Note: Guest Blogger Rachael Allen talks about her experience in Creative Writing Classes.   * * * A good creative writing class feels a bit like growing up. You arrive eager and breathy, whipping out efforts that while earnest are lacking. You listen and admire and emulate. You judge and then learn to empathize. You make friends and feel vulnerable and must continually prove yourself. Through these efforts, if you write and write and write, you hopefully come out with a better sense of yourself and a fat folder of writing on your desktop. I started taking creative writing classes in high school, my school luckily being one with the funds and interest to have an arts program. That class didn’t feel like an academic space; rather, it was a space for me and…

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