I figured I owed you guys an update since I'm seemingly off in lala-land and taking ridiculous amounts of time to post a new chapter.

I don't know, I've been getting frustrated with what I have to write and putting it off. I figure people like writers more when they present their work without seeming super involved on an emotional level with the material, or else it looks like they think it's big shit or something, but... well hey, I do have feelings! These have been my characters for eight years, even if for the first two they were back-burner'd cardboard cut-outs, and for the next two I didn't know them very well. I already wrote about going to the dock and crying about letting them down, so it's too late to act on LJ like I don't care.

Anyway, I'm just frustrated for "Erik". It makes me a little sad that I have to do this to him, especially knowing I end the story with major possibilities in the future, and for Erik it will be a whole new chapter of his life, which I don't know if whether it will damage him even more or help him wake himself up. I'll have to just be that vague for now. Of course I feel badly for Lily, too, who will never be able to think about guys or about Phantom the same way ever again, and disappointed for Westin who has to be a strange friend-type person to her, in limbo for as long as he can handle, and I don't even know where he's going to college after this. I already quite like Westin, and it ain't his fault he got teh crushez on a girl with this many problems. I'm not worried about Mariam or Paulina.

But "Erik"? It'll just pain me to break him down after going with him on this journey almost as thoroughly as I've gone on it with Lily, and keeping him tightly wound, the way he wants to be. In control, the way he wants to be. Enjoying an illusion of love, the only thing he wants.

I was thinking about how I'd have to do a better job coaxing Lily to be attracted to him in the rewrite given how disturbing he looks to most people, but he would only have so many things to say about that. "I might seem scary, but she has all the power here. She has the power to hurt me, to make me desperate, to undo all my work."

Is it me, or Lily?

It's not really right to feel so badly for him, though. So much of this was his fault, too. Not all of it. I read an FF.net review that suspected "Erik" had a tragic past. Well? Under friends cut for you fine people? I can say this: no, it isn't tragic. It's not what anyone would want to experience, but tragic is a very inappropriate word, one he would only use himself with a serious bias. He wasn't abused or anything. Him and his father have very strong personalities and butted heads so much they now have to have a relationship of distant diplomacy, but their interactions still have a taste of malice because they've both done mean things to each other. He scared his mother to the point where she didn't feel save living in the same house because he was violent and refused/refuses to take medications, even if the effects of his schizophrenia by themselves are (luckily) still mild. He didn't have good friends, but he never bothered to make new ones, and his behavior in general has been very successful at repelling people.

And yeah, it was never Lily's responsibility to make him happy, and he forced and manipulated her into the position. I understand that he's desperate now, practically dead inside without her, but it still isn't his right, and he knows that. So I have to write him going so far over the line that it's just rather uncomfortable.

So... CH50 has about 5 pages right now, and I have a little bit of material written for CH51. I'm all over the place in my head; bouncing off walls; thinking of specific situations but knowing I will have to go on a feelz-overload in order to write them convincingly. Sometimes you just aren't ready to get in their heads. Perhaps not all authors do this, but I feel like I'm method acting when I write. I have to be everybody, and because of that I have been to some dark places in my head.

Well, take care, everybody, and I'll keep trying.

♥,
J