That Sarcastic Writer

  Lily? You bite your lip, nope there’s no room for nicknames there. Elsa? You cringe as you remember your Frozen phase. Sydney. As soon as you hear it, you know it’s the one. The perfect name for your main character. You briefly wonder if your parents put this much thought into your name. You shrug, you actually do like your name, now if only people would pronounce it right. You turn your attention back to your character, Sydney. Her friends are going to call her Syd, you decide. That’s the fun part of being a writer, you get to pick your character’s names and nicknames and pet peeves and more often than not, they all contain tiny parts of you. Sydney is going to be a reader, maybe a burnt-out reader, a girl who could read three 300-hundred-page books in a week when she was 12 and now struggles to finish a seven-page short story. You discard the idea of her being a ‘Nancy Drew’ really quickly. She has to be weird and impulsive and have a family that survives the ‘kill everyone who...

  The clock had finished tolling out the hour, and I knew it might already be too late. But I had to try. I sprinted down the hall and out across the deserted ballroom. “He didn’t steal the money” I blurted out, ignoring the startled murmurs from the crowd. You close the book, for once indulging your tired eyes. It’s 12 am and you’re bored. Your phone is charging in the corner of the room, which is probably why you picked up a book in the first place. Your 12-year-old self would be scandalized, you smile to yourself, but she would also be pretty amazed at the fact that you’re writing books now even if you’ve stopped reading them. Your eyes drift to the cover of the book resting on your lap, ‘Nancy Drew’. You’ve read this particular book before, more than once, but you find yourself enjoying it every single time you do. That’s just the magic of this series. The reason you started writing fiction. The reason you have a completed novel saved on your laptop and probably part of the r...

  A steaming hot cup of coffee sits at your desk, the smoke curling upward and fading into the air. A couple of notebooks are haphazardly thrown across the second shelf. You make a mental note to arrange them in a less messy manner while also acknowledging the fact that they will probably remain where they are for the next three weeks. You tap your fingers on your thigh, hoping against hope that the random movement will kickstart your brain. I mean, it worked before, right? you tell yourself, continuing the catchy rhythm. The empty word doc stares at you, mocking you and egging on your self-doubt. Are you even really a writer? Or were those genius pieces of fiction a stroke of luck that you will never be able to replicate again? You don’t know and you are scared to find out. You sit up straight. The idea that had been lurking in the shadowy corners of your mind has finally come out of hiding. But before it leaves its mark on the word doc, it must fight its way through the dozens ...