Young Writers Society

Thud. I hear the familiar sound of her bedroom door closing. I hear her shuffling across the floor, turning on her bedside lamp, and crawling under the covers. I can never guess where I will see her next. Sometimes, I see her through the dim light of a computer screen. Other times I find her through the worn pages of her favorite journal. Occasionally, I will see her behind scribbles on her hand or used napkins, but it’s rather blurry then.

You see, this girl is my creator. She made me who I am, and whenever I see her, she can control my every move. She creates every thought, emotion, and action that I have when I can see her. I don’t think she realizes that sometimes I don’t like the way she makes me. Too frequently, she makes me sad or angry. However, once the laptop shuts down or the book is closed and I can no longer see her, I’m back to myself. Though I guess “myself,” is just a compilation of all the different stories she’s told about me.

When my maker isn’t in eyesight, all I can do is idly wait for her return. I like it when she’s around, even if I do have to be unhappy for her occasionally. Without her here to mold my world, I just sit in dark nothingness. She never gave me a name. I’ve always just been “her,” or “she,” or “I.” There are no background characters; no noises or colors or scenes. Just me, waiting for my next adventure to start.

Though she probably doesn’t know it, I know a lot about her just from observation. I know that when she’s really stressed, she sits at her computer with a cup of tea and makes me take hikes on mountains. When that boy broke her heart last winter, she spent a week straight in bed while I was physically abused by villains she created (who ironically resembled her ex-boyfriend.) I also know that when she’s really sad, she doesn’t really finish my adventures. Instead, she writes me into existence and then stares at me (a blank page in her eyes) until she’s finished crying. Then she puts me away again.

But I also have seen the good things. Because more often than not, after I’m done being abused or after I’ve climbed a really high mountain, she normally looks at me for a little bit and then smiles. It took me a while to figure why she was smiling at me. I realized that I’ve done a good job. I took that beating like a trooper. I hiked that mountain like a pro. She’s proud of me, and that makes it worth it.

I hear the low hum of her computer starting, and I immediately know that tonight she’s chosen typing instead of hand writing. The computer screen is probably the best window for me to see her from, so I’m happy with this decision. I hear her clicks and taps as she gets to a blank page. A bright light shines out of nowhere, and I take this an indicator that I’ll see her soon. As always, I get excited as I start to anticipate the world she’s about to place me in.

Slowly at first, but then increasingly quick, I hear her fingers flitting across the keys. As she sets the scene, I start to see my world come together. Streaks of color coming together to create mountains, forests, trails, and fields. I can feel grass beneath my bare feet, and I can feel a cool breeze in my hair. Finally as I feel myself being brought into existence, the blurry window becomes crystal clear, and there she is.

She’s looking at me with concentration. Every few seconds she stops typing and just stares at me. She doesn’t know I can see her, but that’s okay. This way, I see her with her guard down; I see her how she is naturally. Her face is set into a seemingly constant expression, with her lower lip between her teeth, and her brows furrowed. Her blue eyes are rapidly going across the page over and over as she reads and rereads what she’s already written.

The world behind me is getting more and more vivid, but I don’t care. I’m focused on her. Judging from some of the things she’s written in the past, I feel like I’m her only release sometimes. So, when I get the chance, I really like to look and make sure she’s okay. Plus, it’s kind of fun to try and guess what kind of mood she is in before the creation process really starts.

I look past her for indicators of how this story will go. Judging by the cup of tea, her teary eyes, and the inspirational book on her nightstand, I think it’s safe to assume tonight’s story will be a story about overcoming some sort of obstacles. I like these stories.

She keeps typing, and even though my body is doing everything she wants, and I’m saying the things she wants me to say, all I can think about was that quick glimpse of her face. I’ll see it for a couple more hours at most, and then after one last smile, she’ll put me away again. But that’s okay. She always comes back.

I was the girl she wanted to be. She wrote me to show she could be different, be out there, have drama, and be broken. It's not like she was already broken, but she wanted to be broken from a much better reason than... what she is broken from.

Every time I saw her, it was either through this computer or in her mind. She liked to visit us people a lot and reflect on our lives, what toll we will take. That gives us the chance to dig into hers.

When the time comes to write, it's either some random attack of knowing what she's doing and other times frequent pauses and swearing at herself, running her hands through her hair furiously. There was something bugging her.

Her mind didn't work right. Her heart went it's own way. And her life sorta sucks.

There's always a new guy she writes about, but this time, it was different. It took everything in her not to write the same thing again. A meeting with this guy and change it up into a romantic event. She wrote the truth, what exactly happened that one night at that one party. It made her head hurt and she shut her eyes, pleading herself to write about him even though she just couldn't.

It would make her better. It would make it more real. And, it's pretty entertaining too. I could tell this guy made her different. And it hurt her.

I don't understand why she'd want to be me. I'm sorta a slut. A bitch. And I don't have a pretty organised life. I know, she wants a guy... but is really having a guy better than having a guy you love? Her mind is messed up, but she can fix that. She's a good person and I don't think being me would help in anyway.

"Jane is like my alter ego!" she said with a smile.

That's the thing, I'm an alter ego. As in, do not try to be me, Nicolle. It's just not a smart idea.

When she left me, I just wondered around with everyone else. I've got Will, Jas, Oli, Lena, Alex, Harry, Jessa... there's a bunch of us. And we just don't know what to do. When I'm here, untouched, I think of Emmett and how much I miss him. And that makes me remember how she really likes this guy...

She came back. My creator. A mother really. She sat down at the laptop and started typing again, a world shaping around me. Oh, she was typing about me. I saw what she was typing, what was going on. The surrounding took shape and I saw Emmett again. Then, in a second, it all disappeared and Nicolle screamed.

Oh my, she was all alone at home and tears were streaming down her face. What was I to do? My heart wretched for both her and Emm.

"I can't type... not like this..." her voice was so weak and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't do anything. "What is wrong with me? I am so... stupid." She hissed the last word.

Well, guess what, so am I.

That's why you wouldn't want to be me. I've made so many mistakes... why did I make so many mistakes? Why did you make me into this person? Why couldn't I be Jasmine? She seems perfect. Or, like, couldn't you have made me nice and not slutty? Why did you make my life suck? So you wouldn't be the only one suffering?!

I had to calm down. She wasn't worth it. She made me because she believed I could be a better person! She wanted to prove people can be good even if they started all rocky. And that was okay.

All I want to know though, is why. I deserve the good life. Ugh, seeing her crying made me hurt all over.

Maybe she made me like this so I could relate to her in some way and not be boring like her. She tends to live an utmost boring life.So I'm her with an edge. That's okay.

It was a hard time for her, but she'll be better. I know it. She was okay, so soon enough, she'll be back.

The snow fell in sheets, covering the ground like a soft, white blanket. A cold blanket at that. The day was new, and the air crisp and clear. A perfect day for my little "outing." I must admit, I had been looking forward to re-uniting with Adam for weeks. I has missed him while he was gone overseas to Poland to visit relatives. But now, he was back and had asked me to the diner in town. I couldn't wait.

I practically ran through the snow, attempting and failing not to leap with joy. This day would be perfect! I couldn't wait for his voice to warm me, filling me with laughter. I smiled at the thought.

As I skipped through the snow, a figure shot in front of me, screaming at someone behind it. Seconds later, a second figure sped past, flinging snow on me in the process. Bang. The deafening sound of a gunshot broke the silence of the night. I heard a scream of pain and panicked. Whirling around, I began to sprint through the snow, screaming in fear.

I saw a man pointing a gun at a girl and the girl leaping behind a tree as the bullet slammed into the trunk. I heard myself screaming and saw people pulling out phones, dialing 911. I blinked slowly, and continued my slow sprint toward the diner. Bang. The gun went off again, the frightening sound stopping me in my tracks. I turned and stared into the cold blue eyes of the convict. I shivered. The man spun back around and continued to fire at the girl. I kept running.

Bullets flew everywhere. Not only bullets from the man's gun, but the also came from cops and men dressed in black. So many bullets. Fear shot through my body and my shoes unstuck themselves from the snow as I began my sprint. I was too late.

A cold bullet slammed into my gut, knocking me to the ground. The world slowed, my vision blurred. I could feel my blood draining out of me. I'm just a bystander. Please. The snow around me turned red, and my vision faded to black. I'm just a bystander.

Why do we always die?

Writer's Block

The Void isn't hollow, painted with liquid shadow, as humans so often imagine. It's flooded with abandoned dreams, scraps of events, colors and thoughts clumsily stacked against its walls. And with each passing hour, another dream breaks, more scraps flurry to the bottom, another stack tumbles down.

I cling to a suspension bridge, cursing she who banished me here. The girl who'd taught me love and laughter, so carefully crafted my life. And then so carelessly threw it away.

"Why?" I scream, but I scream at nothing, for she's closed all doors to her mind. "What have I ever done to you?"

My ears absorb laughter. Broken pieces of laughter...Drake's laughter. His flesh and bones are sheer, his heart opaque, a pearly white.

She murdered him, the monster. Without second thought.

Then light tears at the fabric of the void, and this time, no needle comes to stitch it back together. Elation drowns out all rage.

She hasn't forgotten me, after all. My author.

To make this interesting, I have decided to hand the reins to the character who probably likes me the least. Forbye Eldritch.
I made her up in 2011 for a friends' storybook that never ended up launching.

She was bitter because I gave her a tragic backstory, being an inexperienced writer. She was against magic because a fiendfyre killed her family, so being in a magic community was the cruellest twist of fate that I could have conceived.

Now that I am more experienced, I have made some modifications to her surroundings and story. She likes her new governess Mavis and her new home, but still has a merciless sense of humour. I think she got it from Shakespeare.
I am uncertain of her background.

I also exercised her character in a Character Chit-Chat forum once.
A person that we all knew.
She only had one scene, but she made a strong first impression.

While I have tried to improve her life, she still has every right to despise me.
Even now that I've revised and put her in a better place, I still haven't been active in her story for a long time. If I ever do get any more inspiration and ideas for her story, no doubt she will have mixed feelings about me.
Also, thank you very much for reading all this, I didn't think anyone would.

She’s sitting at a McDonald’s this morning. She visits McDonald’s a lot, relatively speaking, although this morning she’s there for the Internet more than food. All she’s bought is an overpriced coffee and three chocolate chip cookies. I don’t understand the appeal, personally, but she’s young yet.

Then again, everyone seems young when you’re three hundred and fifty-six.

She takes a sip of her coffee and shrugs like she’s had better. She probably has. Overpriced coffee is nearly never worth the extra money spent. You might as well get your coffee at a gas station: another thing she does a lot, by the way. But this morning the lure of an Internet connection was too strong to pass up an opportunity to go to what you might almost consider her favorite restaurant.

(She might quibble with that speculation, but if I could I would ask her: What restaurant do you frequent as often as McDonald’s?)

She’s typing away at a laptop, typing much more than drinking her coffee (though the cookies are long gone), but she’s easily distracted. Every few words, she looks up from the screen to gaze out the window. What is that? Writerly contemplation? A love of windows? ADD?

She has a habit of chewing on a thumbnail when she’s stuck, which happens a lot today but not recently. She’s been writing a novel, and there has been little thumbnail-chewing. Instead her fingers have spent the last month flying across the keyboard, except for those occasions when she was overcome with emotion, usually happiness, and stopped to laugh at herself and exclaim over her characters.

Ridiculous. Hard to believe that a serious story could arise from the same mind that writes such fluff.

Now she’s done with that story, or, at least, she’s waiting for feedback before continuing her work. Evidently other writing is not so inspiring as to get her to leave off the thumbnail-chewing.

She sips at her coffee again and shrugs as if she did not already signal to the world that this coffee is not very good. Closes her laptop, shoulders her laptop bag. It’s time for work: first the grocery store where she flips between working the meat department and cashiering, smiling at customers as best she can even when they irritate her, and then to the after-school program where she teaches at risk children.

How humanitarian of her.

And then, after a long day of work and more driving than she cares to do, she’ll head home, curl up again with her laptop, and chew her thumbnail as she tries to think of what to write next.

I know she doesn’t think of me often. If she did, my body wouldn’t be made out of cardboard. I watch her sleep. “Melanie, Melanie, Melanie,” I whisper in her thoughts. Maybe if I say my name enough times she’ll think of me. She doesn’t.

Her body is curled up like an infant. She needs to grow up and care about me. I’ve heard rumors from an unnamed character that she’s thinking about abandoning me and naming him. After four years of living in her mind, I refuse to let that happen. I don’t want to fade, but I know she’s cruel with her terminations.

“Wake up, you stupid human,” I scream. Her body shifts its position. Music sounds. She doesn’t stir. I wonder if she has a hearing disability. I know that humans aren’t naturally good at hearing, but the repetitive music has been playing for 20 minutes. I sit close to her eyes. Their lids are still shut. “Come on,” I say. Slowly, they pry open, then they slam shut. The music continues blaring for an hour before she finally gets up and turns off the alarm on her phone. She walks about the small building. Some elderly humans greet her. They ask if she’s hungry. She eats a sandwich they give her. I can feel her glaring as they fuss over her. Typical human behavior.

She spends the rest of the day in front a bright glowing square box, pressing buttons. She visits blue pages a lot. She looks at a picture of a girl. I hate her. Her mind screams. I don’t get why she hates her. The reason I hate Heather is clear; she tried to kill me in one of our drafts, and our author likes her better for some reason. Our author stares at a picture of a boy for a brief moment. He comes up sometimes in her thoughts, and she gets upset. She doesn’t really have a right to be upset. She didn’t want him anymore. Also, it’s not like he had his heart ripped out by her father in front of her. She’s so pathetically weak and human. She should be spending all those pointless emotions on me, but she doesn't because she's selfish.

A bunch of words are typed, but none of them generate a new character or make me less cardboard-like. She's thinking about herself again and her life, and I wish she could be more altruistic with her emotions and words. If she just spent a few hundred on me everyday, I wouldn't mind that she tends to like all the other characters in my novel better than me even though I'm the main character. I could even forgive her.

When she finally goes to bed, hours past midnight, I cry. She hasn’t thought of me once. I stare at my fingers and I swear one of them is slightly smaller than this morning.

tall thing is like snow.
tall thing make loud sounds at barkers. it barks at barkers.
tall thing curls up in its nest like me. den is cold, nest is warm.
why is tall thing still? tall thing is still for long time, only paws moving, clicking. shapes in front of glow click fast like prey. maybe glow is tasty looking. glow hurts my eyes.
tall thing goes into BIG dens. BIG dens made of rock rectangles. i can't go in BIG dens.
tall thing with other tall things. crinkles paper. listens to tall thing noises.
tall thing goes in food den. i smell it. tall thing food smell weird.
when tall thing see mewers like me, makes squeak noise with mouth. sometimes they come to it. mostly not.
tall thing open strange object. smell bad. drinks water with bad smell. tall thing moves weird, like trees bend in wind. tall thing goes to den with other tall things and LOUD sounds. tall thing moves body with LOUD sounds.
tall thing falls. tall thing okay?
tall thing okay.
tall thing goes back to nest in own den. It sleeps.