What If

A Writer...

She sits on her bed and props her tablet up on a fluffy pillow resting on her lap. It's quiet. The outside dark and dreary, causing her bedroom to be shadowed in a soft gray tint.

She sighs, adjusts her glasses and opens her Wattpad app. It wasn't that she really wanted to write today. She'd actually been sick a lot over the course of the last few weeks. Each sickness leaving only to be replaced by something new.

"My immune system is broken," she woefully thought.

Pushing her hair behind her ears she settled down under the blankets. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard as she reread her last chapter, looking for spelling errors or grammar deficiencies. There were plenty to fix. She sighed softly and fixed the word "out" half a dozen times, replacing it with the proper word, "put." Fat fingers, fast fingers, autocorrect...she had plenty of excuses to blame her mistakes on. All of them seeming viable and legitimate.

Publishing the chapter with the corrections, making sure to put an italicized 'Edited' at the top of the chapter, she now stared at the blank slate that was her next mission.

Her phone vibrated with incoming notifications of comments and votes on chapters from her current and previous books. She pauses her writing to read them, making sure to answer where answers are needed, thanking for reading list adds, and welcoming new followers.

She buries her phone in her blankets and yawn. Reaching out her fingers, she begins to type.

Nari sat at the table looking up at Jimin, her eyes blinking rapidly. "Friends?"

The writer smiles as she types out the story belonging to her characters.  Her fingers move rapidly across the screen, almost too fast for her tablet to keep up.  The story of her characters flowing freely through her fingers.  She's found new happiness and freedom since she finally brought the two characters together.  Her love for writing is renewed with this new development in the story. 

She pauses and answers a few more comments and direct messages on her Twitter, soon coming back to the boring white screen of the editor.  Her thoughts were put on hold and now she must bring them back in track.

She smiled as she typed, imagining the scenario for her characters. She felt their feelings and tried to convey it through words to her readers. Her fingers paused as the story demanded more than she wanted to give at the moment. However, she knew resistance was futile.

She'd learned a long time ago with her first book, that stories end up writing themselves. It was almost creepy to her at first how her story quickly became almost living and breathing under the tutelage of her hands. Now she let each story have their way. It wasn't known for making readers happy, but letting a story be free is the best way to keep a happy author. Happy authors give nice endings. Everyone wins.

The whirring of the pedestal fan in her room filled her ears with white noise as she typed. Eventually she reached over to her earbuds and put on some BTS to listen to. They were her favorite group. She'd followed Kpop groups in the past, but no one had been able to worm their way into her heart quite like BTS. That's why her fics focused around them.

Maybe that's why she enjoyed writing. She loved her characters. Not just the ones focused on her favorite boy group, but also the female leads as well as the supporting characters. She poured her heart into these characters. It always made her feel good to see them loved on.

She glanced at the window beside her bed and notices rain washing across the windows. She oooked back down at her work and before long she was finished. She clicked on Publish and let the new chapter load.

Looking back at the window, she yawned. Rainy days always made her sleepy. She removed her glasses, and laid them down on the table beside her, then put her tablet beside her on the bed. She wanted to write more, but she was so tired.

That had been the problem for a while. She was plain tired. Illness after illness had worn down her body. Sleep was as elusive as always, and then when paired with sickness, it made for one terribly tired writer.

Writing was her stress reliever. She lived a hectic and chaotic life. No one really knew the struggles she went through. Especially the people she would often communicate with on the internet. Screens separated them. Sometimes miles and even oceans separated her from her readers or her twitter friends. It was almost sad.

Her eyes slowly close for the last time and soon she was fast asleep.