Location: College City, Indiana, USA

Home of Teenaged Author

Time: 2014-Present

Blinding white light contrasted heavily against the dark shadows in the long, dorm-like room. It was cold, freezing in fact. The teenage girl sitting in yoga pants and a t-shirt didn't seem to mind however. She sat in her bed, the deep purple comforter thrown haphazardly across her legs, thin protection against the burning hot laptop bottom. The teenager rubbed a hand over her face and through her tangled dark brown hair. The laptop screen was taunting her, mocking her.

She despised when words failed her. She absolutely loathed it. The blank word document was laughing in her tired face. The teenager glanced at her clock, seeing she had been staring at the screen for four hours in desperation for inspiration to strike. In truth, she was getting bored. It had nothing to do with the context of the story, or fanfiction in general, but she was getting bored of her stories. Or at least, most of them. There were few she still had some faith in. The one she was trying to continue, the one she kept getting e-mails from the website she had posted the story to, was not one of them.

She knew, by doing what she knew she must, that she would disappoint a lot of people. She hated disappointing people, almost as much as failure with words. Do not misunderstand, she still loved to write, and still wished to pursue a career with it further down the line, but she was getting older and building upon half-assed and nonexistent plots from when she was fourteen was tedious. She had other things she could be working on. It was already late anyway. She may as well take a break.

She needed at least two hours of sleep after all. And after going through seventh grade with mild insomnia, she had never slept the same and she knew it would be hours before blissful unconsciousness took her.

Netflix is a wonderful thing for a procrastinator. It was also a wonderful thing for a teenage author struggling with how to finish all the stories she wanted to. Brief ideas and small doses of inspiration had flickered through her mind since that night a few days ago. She hadn't dared touch a keyboard since her disastrous fifth attempt at continuing one of the many stories in her archive. Even ideas for her original stories seemed to have come to a halt as she devoted her time to trying to please the readers.

As she watched the small television set up in her room, the audio seemed to cut out as her thoughts overtook her.

You know what you have to do, the logical part of her spoke. It sounded older, colder, and more reasonable. Almost like a parent speaking to a child, only slightly more understanding. It sounded an awful lot like her when she needed to give relationship advice to her friends and was then told she must've remembered her past lives or something.

But...do I really have to? They'd all be so upset...I don't like making people upset, despite popular belief, the gentler, more self-conscious part of her mind retaliated. It hurt her to hurt others. She may look and act tougher than she was, but if it really came down to it she felt guilty. Of course there's a time and a place. Putting her friend's no-good-ex-boyfriend in his place for the way he handled the end of their relationship was something she didn't mind hurting someone over. Besides, she hadn't initiated it originally. She expressed disappointment in him for the way he handled it (seeing as she was his friend too) and he blew up on her. She felt no guilt whatsoever.

The sooner the better. Do it quickly; it'll be like ripping off a Band-Aid. They will get over it.

But will they? I'm not so sure...

A crummy fanfiction from when you were, like, 12 made you popular on this site. A slightly less crummy yet equally clichéd story has kept you popular. They will move on.

The war in her head was brought to a cease fire as her friend returned from the bathroom. The teenager held out the bowl of popcorn and moved the blanket on the black leather couch so that her friend could rejoin her.

"Now we can get this 'get-over-the-lame-ex' party of two-thrown by moi-started," The teenager told her friend as she hit play on the remote.

The screen was screaming at her again, yelling at her, accusing her. The blank word document seemed to glare at her. It was dark again and the light from the laptop only seemed to enhance the dark circles under her eyes. The blinking cursor was the only blinking being done.

"I have to finish, I have to finish. I won't quit yet. I can't quit yet..." The half-hearted mantra escaped her lips in a hoarse whisper. She really needed to get something to drink...and eat. Wow, had her stomach really been empty for so long? She hadn't eaten since dinner...from two days ago. That's not good.

It's not healthy and you know it isn't healthy. You should eat and stop being so picky.

But they're all on this diet and did you even see that meatloaf? It looked like it was as dehydrated as I am. And I haven't had actual water for, like, three days. I've been sustaining on Mountain Dew and Vanilla Coke. And coffee. Lots of coffee...

That's supposed to stunt your growth.

Like that really matters. I'm five-foot-seven-inches. I think I'll live.

"Shut up," the teenager told herself as her thoughts dragged off the topic she was forcing herself to think about. After a few seconds of silence, she started thinking again and she finally shut her eyes against the shining light of the computer screen. "Damn it," She whispered to thin air.

This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair to them. This wasn't fair to her, she concluded. Her phone suddenly buzzed, causing her to open her eyes, and lit up the room like a firework. She groped the nightstand lazily for it, too exhausted mentally and physically to do more than reach groggily from her bed. She checked it through squinting eyes. An e-mail. She groaned, but it came out more of a whimper with her scratchy throat. Two more people had favorited and followed her story...and her. Great. More people to let down.

She sighed to herself. She hated it when the online authors did that. She hated herself for doing it now. Out of all the people who would hate her for this, she was definitely going to hate herself the most.

The least she could do was make it enjoyable right? She owed it to them. Give them something to read, even if it's not exactly what they were wanting to read. Besides, someone could adopt the story right? She certainly didn't mind. They might have better luck with it. Hell, they might make it better than people are perceiving it to be. They could do better than her. They deserved better than her after this.

Turning her phone off and returning it to the nightstand a good stretch away from the edge of her bed, the teenage writer cracked her knuckles and her fingers, for the fist time in months, flew across the keys, typing and editing faster than she could recall ever doing.

She would give them a small story rather than apologize profusely. She couldn't apologize for becoming bored with her own work. She couldn't apologize for half-assing her work and just making it up on the spot. That was unfair to the readers. Worst of all, it was unfair to herself. If she wanted to be a writer, a real, published, name on the cover author, then she had to do better. First and foremost she had to feel good with her work. She had to enjoy it just as much as the readers, if not more. She needed to get down to business and grow up a little bit and take her work more seriously than she had been lately. It had become routine. Then it had become a game. Then it had become just another thing that could be put off till later, and that was unacceptable. Her readers were going to be disappointed in her, might even hate her, but none of them will compare to how she feels about herself right now.

She loathes herself. She's disappointed in herself. She feels anxious and like she might be sick because what she has done, what she is going to do, is worse than any conflict or battle or injury she could inflict upon fictional characters. It is worse than anything she could do to herself. The guilt would gnaw away at her insides for years to come and she would tell her children about the stories that never-were-but-got-so-damn-close.

So. That was interesting. Of course, there's things I failed to include and things that were purposely omitted. You may or may not have figured it out, but the stories that receive this not attached to them are now and forever discontinued. At least, when written by me.

I hate when authors just discontinue their stories and I loathe myself for doing it too. But I really have to. I have no inspiration left for this story, no motivation to write fanfiction in general anymore really, and I really just want to focus on my stories outside of dabbling with another author's property.

I know some of you will be disappointed and others will hate me for this; some will be indifferent and others may be little less than upset. I understand the deep grudges than can be held amongst people in fandoms, and further understand that those grudges could be triggered by an ending like this, igniting a feeling of never wanting to read another story by me ever again. I fully understand and accept that this could happen, even if I sincerely hope it does not.

I'm also here to tell you that you more than likely will not be seeing much from me ever again on here in terms of writing. But that doesn't mean I'm not reading them and reviewing on occasion. I'd also like to say that this story is up for adoption I guess. I don't care if you want to continue it or re-write it or whatever. So long as you tell me first; I'd love to see what you do with it.

Goodbye for a long while probably.

~Teen Author

~Just Another Teenager Looking for a Place to Belong

~Disappointed and Hateful

~Hopeful and Ready to Move On

~Me