Protagonize Pub

An expression of my frustration that I can't finish my stories >:[
Join in if you want!

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The doors burst open to the pub, startling the gathered writers out of their reverie. A strange, rather short girl wanders in and takes a seat at the bar.
"What can I get for you miss?" The portly bartender asks as he cleans out a filthy mug of some foul smelling ale.
"Er...." She surveys his grease covered apron which is being used to clean the mug. "I'll just have a cherry Coke thanks..."
He returns her quizzical look before plodding off to retrieve her soda.
Right, now where was I? No...I wasn't there. What was meant to come next?
The red haired girl sighed in frustration. It had always been this way. She'd come up with a brilliant idea only for it to fizzle out like a firecracker that had turned out to be a dud.
"Whats the use?" She muttered, scratching at an indent in the wood of the bar.

The bartender returned with the girl's cherry Coke. He had put whipped topping and a cherry on top which delighted the girl.
She offered him a smile, "Thank you,"
She immediately regretted her smile. His was rather grisly and he was missing quite a number of teeth.
"My pleasure milady,"

It was unusually quiet in the bar. When the girl looked over her shoulder, she found that the writers that had previously been gathered had mysteriously disappeared.
Great. I was hoping to get some advice from one of them.

@VictoriaGlass (What a wonderful name!)

One writer does remain, though so quiet and compact, it may take more than one look to notice her. She sits hunched over a notebook in a corner- her preferred vantage point. But her eyes are turned down and her face nearly hidden by an assortment of glasses. Their former contents had done nothing to help her current predicament.

If it was advice the red-head was seeking, it probably would not be found in this curly-haired creature... nor on the half-written page she stares through. Commiseration, however, is on the table.

The girl's eyes settle on a lone figure in the corner of the room, buried in a mountain of empty glasses. The only portion of the person visible is a shock of curly hair that protrudes above the rows of glasses.
"Excuse me bartender, you wouldn't happen to know the name of that lady over there would you?"
The bartender's deep laughter fills the air, "No miss! She came here last evening and has been drinking away ever since. That woman sure can hold her liquor," He chuckles.
The girl ponders whether or not this stranger would be kind enough to accept her company. The lone writer was the only hope the girl had left, seeing as all others had abandon the pub for whatever reason. She hops down from the barstool, cherry coke in hand, and makes her way through the maze of empty tables to the corner of the room.
"Hello," She says, "You look like you could use some company. Mind if I join you?"

The woman jumps. The voices across the room had been background noise, but suddenly one was closer. Her elbows- who had been under much duress these past hours- slipped over the sticky table edges. As her forehead connected dramatically with her notebook, the writer became the conductor, igniting a symphony of clattering glass. As the others sang, one glass quit its perch atop another's rim and rolled off the table. The girl cringed as it bounced, but miraculously didn't shatter. Strong stuff.

She smoothed her feathers, straightened her notebook and pens. She looked up, a little flushed but otherwise nonchalant. She cleared her long-unused throat, yet still her voice came out squeaky.'Ah. Ahem. No- not at all. I suppose this paper has been stared at quite enough by now. Don't want it to get too big an ego... It's mocking me as is...'

Her rambling trailed off as she peered through her towers of glass. Her eyes ran over the pint pots and bottles with the exacting search of an antiques dealer. She plucked one from the garden and showed it to the bartender with a nod.

'Oh, um, I'm Christi. You are...?'

[I probably won't be back 'til Monday. Just wanted to give you the common courtesy of letting you know I'm not abandoning the thread.]

"Victoria," The girl tells her newfound acquaintance with a smile.

She seats herself opposite Christi, withdraws a notebook from her pocket, and flips through it.

"How's your story coming along?" Victoria asks, peering over the glasses at Christi's own notebook.

She appears to have more than one pen for whatever reason, one green, one blue and one red.
Victoria gnaws on the eraser of her pencil, awaiting Christi's reply. She casts a furtive glance at the empty glass on the floor and stoops to pick it up. Surprisingly it had survived its fall one hundred percent intact. Victoria places it amongst its brothers on the tabletop.

She gnaws on the eraser of her pencil, consults her notebook, and patiently awaits Christi's reply. During the silence which follows, the bartender saunters over and fills the empty glass Christi had shown him previously. The dark ale sloshes around inside of it, spills over the edge and drips over the thick knuckles of the bartender.

"Here you go ma'am," The bartender sets the glass in front of Christi and waddles back to his place behind the bar

Christina's eyes glaze over in response to the question. They let their glassy gaze drift slowly down, like snowflakes, settling at last upon the blank end of the page.

'At the moment?' she eventually decides, 'It's not.'

'Ta, thanks.' she adds to the bartender.

She flicks a small frown at the notebook, a slight wrinkle to the nose. She breathes a quiet sigh and flips it over, closes it, banishes it to the dark of a sling bag beside her. Her pens drop in after it- one, two, and three. She imagines them echoing like stones in a wishing well. Brushing a long drape of curls over her shoulder, the woman takes a swig of ale and settles back in her seat.

'It's the curse of the stunted story.' Christi rejoined. 'Quite often when people talk to me about the dreaded Writer's Block, they mean they're having trouble with inspiration. They can't get the ideas, or if they can, they can't seem to develop them. But this sort gets me far more frustrated. All the ideas are there. They play out- sometimes to the very ending- and develop quite well. In my head. I even hear the precise words I want to use, I see the structure of the story, but... As soon as I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard? I just stare at the white space and freeze up.'

Victoria nods, "I can relate to that,"

She sips her cherry coke cautiously, eyeballs it as though it might possibly be poisoned, and sets it aside.

"I have inspiration as well, but I lose interest. I want to write the story faster than humanly possible," She laughs quietly as though she has just made a joke, which, she hasn't.

"I find that collaborating helps with me, but I want to write things on my own. And I can't,"

The red haired girl rips out a page from her notebook and begins to fold it into some form of origami. The only sound is the quiet rustle of the paper as it shapes itself into a square. She flips out the petals of the flower, smiling to herself as the lily blooms from the paper.
"I get bored with a story far too quickly, throwing away my characters like old toys that a child is no longer interested in," She holds the lily up, showing it to Christi.

It's Christi's turn to nod. She smiles at the paper flower.

'Hmm. "...faster than humanly possible."' she quotes. 'In a certain way you could say that that's my problem, too. Although, for myself I feel almost like it's a matter of management as well.'

She ponders for a moment how to express her thoughts. 'I mean, I think I have too many ideas going at once. And because I haven't managed to finish one, the others have been piling up. Writing down notes and outlines and such can sometimes stave them off for a while, but when I inevitably take too long, they come a-knockin' again.'

Christi takes another drag on her drink. She wipes the foam from her lip and goes on.
'I've come to picture it like in a cartoon or a family film or something- where someone's told to clean up and they shove it all in the closet stacked to the ceiling, so it all spills out when someone opens it. I feel like, all those backed-up stories in my mind are all toppling against the door. When I open up to let out some creativity, it all starts falling out at once, so I have to slam the door again before I get buried. I try to open it up just a crack, y'know, try to channel it, control the flow. But that's when it just gets stuck there in the crack. Maybe a few bits ooze out, but that's it. I think that basically covers it. But what to do about it?'

She adds, after a pause, 'Collaboration and feedback can help me sometimes. Gives me a little exercise, bit of energy, a little boost of strength to hold the door just right and just long enough to pick some things out. But even that seems to be temporary.'

Victoria eyes her cherry coke once more, reaching out to it. She wraps her slender fingers around the bottle and pulls it close to her, watching the dark liquid swirl inside.

"Perhaps you could open the closet door, let it all fall out and sort through it afterwards...?" She queries. The lily sat on the table, looking a little forlorn.

Victoria reachs out her other hand and wads her creation into a ball. Like what she does to her own stories, she thinks to herself.

'Sounds like something easy to do, albeit hard work to clean up,' Christi replies, 'excepting that I'm not actually sure myself whether it does sound easy. In a physical crisis, the body may take over. In a mental or emotional crisis one tends to simply shut down. The major flaw in that theoretical method comes down to two things: One, there is as much pressure on the outside of the door as the inside; and Two, I do not control the door.'

Another quarter of the pint vanished.

'I can't pretend I don't know what is (for lack of a better word) "wrong" with me. The answer is simply that I have- as all adults do- become afraid. If I look back at the times when I was most productive, most free, the times when it came to me so naturally as it should and short stories were written in minutes, chapters in days... if I look back to those times to find what has changed, the missing ingredient is glaringly obvious.'

She watched the lily crumble under the hand of its creator. She watched hundreds of unshared words fold in with the petals and disappear.

Victoria chuckled, quoting Christi, 'As all adults do,'

Still laughing, she took a drink of her cherry coke,

'Not sure I understand that seeing as I'm not exactly an adult,'

With a twinkle in her eye, she winked and set her coke back down on the table.

Christina's smile was wry to the point of lopsidedness. In her own eye was a glint as she pulled her gaze sideways until it snapped away from Victoria and dove into the pint glass. She finished off the drink with a grimace and set the glass free into the crowd of it's brethren.

'I would say I hope you never do, but, you're human (I assume) and so am I. And I turned out not to be invincible, so I doubt you will.'

She began to stack the glasses into more uniform columns. When she spoke again it was in a quiet voice of musing, cloudy with thought, heavy with concentration.

'It's lonely as a child. You're awkward and confused and always out of place. Things are too big for you- words, furniture, people, concepts... the world. It's the time you should be learning but people keep things from you, "protect" you. For your own good, they try to convince you. They speak in hushed tones around you. They say they don't want to say this in front of you. They speak about you, above your head, behind your back, when you're asleep. They always try to force you to do things you don't want to do- brush your teeth, go to sleep, go to school, finish your dinner. They usually succeed.

'It's lonely as an adolescent. You're awkward and confused and always out of place. Things are too complicated for you- parents, math homework, decisions, relationships, expectations... mankind. It's the time you should be experiencing but people keep you from things, "protect" you. For your own good, they would have you believe. They speak in raised tones to you. They say they don't want to have this conversation with you. They speak about you, over you, behind your back, while you're at your therapist's. They always try to force you to do things you don't want to do- be back by eight, finish your homework, believe this religion, subscribe to these politics, never see that person again. They often succeed for a time.

'It's lonely as an adult. Everything is different. Your friends move away form you. You move away from your family. That missing ingredient I mentioned? It's companions. You sever yourself from childhood, from dependency, from being taken care of. You have to.You have to step over the edge or go no further.You find that someone, long ago, laid out for us all this masquerade. You're politely awkward and privately confused and always pretending not to be out of place. Things are too risky for you- speaking up, asking questions, starting a business, quitting a job. No matter how free-spirited or free-thinking you are, you are still human and you fall into some of the traps some of the time. How fast you get out of them- or if you do at all- that's the key. It's the time you should be travelling and doing what you love, but people chain you to the spot and spit on the things you love. For- what else?- your own good of course. To "protect" you yet again, even though you are expected not to need protecting. They shriek at you. They say you are wrong. Always, you are wrong. They speak about you, above you, over you, to your face. They try to force you to do things you don't want to do. Take the first job available, pick a side, have kids, never see them, go to university and pay all your life, submit, forget your dreams and waste your talent, conform. They seem to succeed far too much. At least, as an independent adult you can fight it. You can realize that if they're still "They", then you still have a chance to not become them.You may watch with despair as your friends, your family, become them. But you can choose to fight it. You should fight it...'

She turns suddenly, mid-stacking, a face of conviction framed by her wild mane of curls. In her eyes shines a hint of moisture and an incandescent passion.
'Fight it.'

She returned to her task.
'I imagine it's lonely as a senior. Abandoned in "homes". Family and friends dying, moving away. Being talked about, talked above, being humoured. Being forced to do things you don't want to do... While we still have our youth...' Christi trails off as she gathers up a few stacks of glasses and edges around the table.
'Here I go speaking like some sort of prophet again. Sorry for the rant. Fancy a drink?'
Then, 'Er- actually. Lemme just check my tab.... Ah hell, whatever. Tea? Fancy some tea?'

Victoria stares at the woman across the table, her eyes as wide as saucers.

"For someone who has drunk this much," She gestures to the table, still littered with empty glasses, "You can actually continue to hold an intelligent conversation, speaking of deep things,"

Victoria glances at her empty glass that had previously been filled with cherry coke.
She considers Christi's offer of tea. "Sorry, I'm American, I don't enjoy tea in the summertime,"

Christi nearly colours at the acknowledgement of her excessive consumption, but she staves it off, knowing for herself that it isn't every day. Still, she hadn't quite noticed how much she'd had. The concentration- or lack thereof, she wasn't sure which- had distracted her mind from the mechanical rising and falling of her pint hand.

'Ahem. Hm. Yes, I suppose I have had a bit, haven't I? But aye, 'tis true- staying generally comprehensive when drunk is a talent of mine. I have found pubs to be a fine forum for independent thinking... when in the right company. It's probably why governments tax the life out of them. Revolutions start in these buildings.'

She totteres the stacks of glasses to the bar, de-constructs them there, and returns for the rest.

'Well, I'm American, too. But the mother brought us up on tea. And living in England for several years helps, too. Something else, then?'