A Day In The Life of a Fanfiction Author

A/N: Normally, I don't write these kinds of stories, but after a year and a half of Phantom Writer's Block, and being unable to post anything that was actually any good, I decided I had to write something. This is what happened, and while its not the next chapter of Bent and Broken, like most of you were probably hoping, it is Phantom related. And if you really need to read stuff that I've written, I also write under the pen name "Shakespeare's Girl." Although she doesn't write anything in the Phantomverse.

"I'm bored," Erik complained to me one day. "You never do anything with us anymore. Raoul and I never make out, Christine and I never make out, Raoul never makes out with Christine so I can watch jealously, Carlotta doesn't try to take over the Opera, I don't get to kill anyone. This place is SO boring!"

"Hey!" I complained back, "I'm busy trying to clean my room up! Sad as it is, since I still live with my mother at age twenty, I have to clean up this mess or she'll do it for me. If she does, you run the risk of discovery and elimination. So sit there for a minute and stop whining. Do you see Christine whining?"

I glanced at Christine, who was primping unashamedly in my mirror. In one hand she held my hoop earrings, in the other, she held my little sister's straightening iron.

"Darn it Christine!" I yelled. "My sister has been driving me nuts about that straightening iron! Why did you take it?"

"I like it," she simpered, dropping my hoops into the mess of notebook paper and pop cans on my floor while she separated her hair into sections to begin straightening. "And I didn't steal it. Erik did."

I turned on Erik. He grinned sheepishly. "I was bored!" he defended himself. "You never let me do anything fun. At least let me make out with someone! Even the foppette would be better than this!"

I sighed. "Erik, I know you're bored. I understand, really. But please, try and be more like--hey! Where's Raoul?"

Erik and I searched frantically for the favorite pretty-boy. "Raoul! Come out and I'll let you chose your partner for the next fan fic I write!" I called. Instantly my closet doors opened and, amid a shower of empty hangers and high heeled shoes, Raoul's head and chest popped out of the closet.

"Oh no," I sighed. "Not again. I should never have let you read that fan fic where you liked small enclosed spaces."

Raoul smiled happily and bounced out of the closet, one of my scarfs around his neck in a frighteningly feminine knot, and my fuzzy bunny slippers on his feet. I sighed and untied the scarf. "How many times must I tell you to leave my scarves alone?" I asked, rhetorically.

"I don't know," he giggled. "Do I really get to pick my partner?"

"Yes," I nodded reluctantly. "But--"

I was interrupted by a yelp from Christine. "Ouch!" She was doing a silly little dance that I recognized as the one she did when she was in pain. "Ow ow ow ow ow!"

I looked closer and discovered the source of her pain. She had grabbed the straightening iron with her bare hands...on the hot part.

"Christine, don't make me wake up Meg to control you," I threatened. She quickly quieted and adjusted her grip on the iron. I turned around, and moaned again. My eyes closed. The one thing I couldn't stop was Erik when he got in one of his torture the idiots moods. And he was in one right now. All I could do was watch, shove Meg over to the other side of my bed, where she napped, and pick up my laptop to chronicle the events of Erik the Raoul torturer.

At the moment, Erik had tied up Raoul in the scarves he'd gathered in my closet. He was contemplating the difference between metal and plastic hangers and how much pain he wanted to inflict on the best kisser of the group, when Raoul decided he didn't want to be tortured.

Within seconds the room was reduced to anarchy. I decided to leave the four of them alone and get myself a chai latte before I went insane. It was worse than being a parent of an uncontrollable toddler, it had to be. Although I highly doubted a toddler was quite as entertaining as Raoul hitting on everyone I introduced him to, or Erik torturing Raoul and Christine, and when she was being stubbornly girly, Meg.

As I poured milk into my Chai, I wondered how long it would be until Erik found his lasso again. I had hidden it in my underwear drawer, but as Christine went in there more often than I did--and that is NOT what it sounds like. Christine just like the smell of my sachets! I swear! That and I tend to live out of laundry baskets--she was likely to uncover the thing and hand it right over to Erik. She should have known better, as the last time Erik got his hands on the lasso he'd used it to hang her from the radio antenna down the road and leave her there. Luckily, Raoul had been in hero mode at that time, and had quickly found and saved her.

I often wondered at Raoul's abrupt changes, from silly fop to handsome hero to giggling gay to dark and borderline depressed. He was the worst of them for crazy character swings. Christine gave him a run for his money sometimes, but she was no where near as crazy as Raoul could be. Erik I could always count on to be stubborn and sultry. Meg was just Meg. You either loved her for it or hated her for it. Either way it was easy to tell what Meg would do next.

I decided I had better not leave Erik alone with Raoul too long. Gulping the rest of my Chai I headed back downstairs.

"You better not have made a bigger mess," I warned, stepping through my door and back into my world of chaos.

A/N 2: So, I'm not making fun of Phantom of the Opera Sterotypes, I'm embracing them. And let me just say right now, mulit-chapter fiction is much harder than I thought it was. I mean, I've been writing novel length stuff for ages now, but when you sit down and say "I'm going to write a multi-chapter story that will blow everyone's socks off" it suddenly becomes nearly impossible. In truth, I really hate what happened with Bent and Broken. It was never intended to go past being a one shot, and I still have the original version on my computer. I re-read it earlier, and I really prefer it. But... I also know that there is a whole slew of people out there who really want the long version. And I'm so torn, because I hate the long version, I hate the way it's heading, I don't want to go there, because it's trying to be dark, and there in lies the problem. I try to be dark and I get melodrama, which is bad. So my choices are to write something I hate, rewrite something I hate so I don't hate it, or to just give up and post the oneshot again, and tell everyone who doesn't like it to go to... somewhere hot and humid, because hell is humidity. Anyway. I'll do something about this whole mess soon. I just don't know what yet.