A Writer's Lament: An RP Idea

Regicidal wrote:
He stared at the tip of his fountain pen, pressed against the porous paper and leaving a slick of black ink at the spot; the thoughts of half a dozen characters rolling through his mind as he did. Of course, there were a hundred and twenty pages of manuscript behind the growing splotch that marked the pinnacle of an argument between the two main characters. It just so happened, that a womans thoughts were just that, hers. Something Keith Black just couldn't bring to mind. The character, Sarah, was admittedly masculine throughout the entire story. But this, this argument between herself and the male character wasn't going to end well. Lies, cheating, a death among friends, all of it lead to the broken spirit of a woman. The spirit of a woman that Keith, as he stared at the slowly running ink, now thought that he could never properly capture. Her response made no sense, it was so... male.

Letting a deep sigh roll from his lungs, he let the pen go with a little more zest than intended, putting the pen in a precarious balance on its tip before falling away from him and landing with a soft tap of plastic against wood. The flick of the tip sending a short and ragged spurt of ink two inches down the page. Keith simply rolled his eyes. Whenever he did get finally get that line through his head, he would just write around the splotches. Made for better reading when his publisher got around to it anyways.

His publisher.

That was a thought that brought on another headache. His publisher was waiting for the second half of his first book. Three hundred pages of drama-filled goodness. They already had a heft stack of chapters with them, chapters that had been heartily read through and applauded. Yet the man behind the desk that signed the checks was still waiting to sign the big one. Meanwhile his editor was chomping at the bits to get the second half of the book to the desk. She often called two, maybe three times a day to make sure he was actually writing. For the most part, she got a straight answer. Unless of course he wasn't writing. Then it was something along the lines of, “I'm finding a muse,” or ,”Can't you hear that? It's inspiration!” as he rapped steadily on his desk as she started off on a rant about the need for material.

“That's it, I need a break,” he spoke to the office around him. A small room tucked into the corner of his third floor condo on Panama City Beach. For all the glamorous thoughts that the word 'Condo' brought about in PCB, it was hardly that.

The place was as cheap as he could find since the market had taken a dump. The condo consisted of four rooms, maybe one thousand square feet if you counted the balcony on the south wall of the living room/kitchen, which was the basis of the ridiculous price on the place. The office was little more than a broom closet with enough room for a cheap desk, a small window on the south wall looking out on the beach, and of course the minuscule, cracked leather chair he sat in for so many hours a day. The office opened up into the living room via archway. The glass balcony door took up a third of the south wall, a couch was set up in the middle of the room facing the western wall, and the thirty-two inch flat screen hanging on it. The entrance to the condo lay on the middle of the north wall, opening into the oh-so-small excuse of a kitchen and bar tucked into the northwestern corner. The north wall was the 'wet wall' the one that held the sink, dishwasher, all of the kitchen amenities. The 'bar' was a counter that faced the north wall as well. The northeast wall held a card table with a couple cheap chairs on either side. On top of which sat last night's Chinese take-out.

Regicidal wrote:"Find a girl," he said, "Put her in the same situation and get yourself some research, man."