Lyric Elizabeth Andrews

by Elizabeth Carlson

She has my eyes and often resembles my hair color. She looks like me in every feature and some might even say she even shares my DNA, but in my eyes she always has been better in every way. She is more confident, more sociable, and more talkative. She's the one everyone likes, the one I once strived to be.Buffy Andrews once said, "Writers see the world differently. Every voice we hear, every face we see, every hand we touch could become story fabric." In all of my life with any quote I've read I don't think I could relate to any of them as I did to this one. As a writer I have never believed that a story could be purely "fiction." In my mind it was always one in the same. Something, anything could be apart of a story and something about any story is true, otherwise how could you have written it?We met when I was in tenth grade, last year. I had been writing characters who resembled real people since before sixth grade but none compared to her. She was different in every way but at the same time she was just the same as all the rest. We met in an alleyway in the city. Her name was Lyric Elizabeth Andrews, but at the time she didn't even know that. She didn't know where she was or what she was suppose to do. I was he one helped her out of the ditch she had dug herself in and got her back on her feet, my mistake. Reckless Lyrics is the first novel I have ever finished and I finished it before the end of my tenth grade year. The novel portrayed a girl without her memory whom later discovers she is apart of an illegal cult that kills murders. Throughout the story she meets many of her friends who she had met before she had lost her memory all over again and in often times the story is told in flashbacks as she tries to remember who she is. In actuality I started the story around Christmas time in my creative writing class last year. I only wrote three chapters, but each of those chapters told the three perspectives the story was portrayed: Zoey, neoku, and lyric's. Each of them were in completely different places and as the story progressed, they all began to intertwine. Honestly though, I debated throwing the story away a few times as I had done in my past but after a few friends read and told me they liked it, I continued on. Once again, my mistake.Over the course of the book, Lyric took a very confident and caniving persona. In some sense she did everything I was afraid to do and the more I indulged into her character the more our lifestyles intertwined. She became my double and it wasn't hard to figure out. A good kick of when writing a story with characters that resemble real people is to ask yourself, what would they do in this situation? Once you think of that, the story becomes character driven and it's easy to let the character carry the story out. Lyric, on the other hand, did more then just carry the story out. She took every situation into her own hands, including my situations in real I wrote the story, I found myself asking less of "what would I do in this situation?" To write a new scene in the book And more of "what would Lyric do?" In my real life situations. Of course, in Reckless Lyrics, Lyric is the hero of the story so you may be asking yourself how could that be so bad, but we can't breeze over the fact that she is a killer; and if we want to start a list she also had multi-personality disorder. Multiple situations in the book she discusses with a figurative girl in her mind who seems to know exactly who she is and was. It was during the month of April was when her personality and mine intertwined more then ever. When I listened to music I would think of how it related to the book and when I began to think to myself she was always there. By April, Lyric knew exactly who she was and she had lost her best friend, Zoey, because of who she was. She was upset and angry and I understood exactly why; but by April, this was when I got writers block. The change started when I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was mad at my senior friends for graduating soon, I didn't want to associate with anyone during lunch, and I was almost more obsessed with my success then who I lost in the process. I assumed nobody who I was friends with wanted to be friends anymore and that they'd rather just stop talking all together so i detached myself before I thought I would get hurt. I didn't want to be submissive, I wanted to talk to my friends and be there for them if they ever needed me, but she didn't care. In a way I guess it was protection but I had wound my way so far into the book I had forgotten that reality and fantasy were two different things. I assumed that if Zoey didn't accept who Lyric was and how much she was trying to change then none of my friends in real life would accept me for who I am or was at the time. Of course, I am no killer, but to gain success at the time I didn't care who I left behind. In a way she began to control me and I strived to be more like her. I wanted to like the simple characteristics I gave her like chai tea soy milk and I forced myself to act more and more like her everyday. Knowing that, the writers block was the worst that could've hit me. Lyric was mad, upset, sobbing in tears and felt like there was no way out. She was at the lowest point in the novel and she wasn't going to go easy on me. For a while I stopped trusting anyone and everyone around me. I hated everything people did and despised them for it. In someways, I felt like I had multi personality disorder.I tried to speak out against her over and over again in the coming month, trying to explain it to other people. Though, it's very hard to explain something like this, most people thought I was crazy or I was making it up and I had many low points from that. My personal confidence fell and I was very upset, once I even thought hurting myself was a better option but a very good friend of mine talked me out of it.That night was probably the worst. I had been trying to explain It for two weeks and nobody really listened to me. Either that, or I couldn't exactly explain what was really going on without them believing was truly insane. I had practically given up on writing reckless lyrics all together because I couldn't get passed my heroes lowest point and that was the worst mistake yet, three strikes and I was out.I was in my room alone and I was talking to one of my best friends on the phone after a concert. She noticed I wasn't exactly acting happy and she asked me what was wrong. At first I tried to keep up a strong front, but it didn't take more then ten minutes for me to crack open like an egg. I tried to explain everything in the best way I could without her thinking I was crazy and she told me she didn't think I was crazy. She told me that the best way to deal with it was to take it one step at a time. One problem after another until I could focus better. She also told me that she was looking forward to reading reckless lyrics, that she thought I was a great writer. Today I don't think I could thank her enough for that night, though it wasn't just what she had said that helped. My friend I talked to on the phone's name was Zoe Harper. We had been best friends for the longest time and she was actually the girl I based "zoey" from reckless lyrics off of. You see, she was the one who snapped me back. She showed me that Zoey and Her were two different people and that she wasn't going to leave me. Things in real life weren't the same as what was going on in my novel and From there on, things would be looking a little after day, no matter what my brain told me lyric would do I tried to do what I wanted. I talked to my friends during lunch and listened to the song I knew I couldn't relate to the book. I stayed away from my computer and away from reckless lyrics. I didn't want anything to do with it and soon she was less of a headache and more of a distant memory. In an ironic twist it was like I had lost my memory of her. Zoe helped me through the process and by the time I felt normal again, summer was right around the corner. It took me a while to put myself back together but once I had really distinguished between reality and fantasy, Mrs. Pro taught my creator writing class quite a few ways to get over writers block and that was when I realized I couldn't stop writing. I came back to my computer toward the end of the year and today, reckless lyrics book one is finished with two more in the series to come.Lyric and I, we don't talk anymore. Sometimes I still relate music to the book, but not my life. Reality and fantasy, you see often have a very fragile balance between the two and sometimes it's easy to cross the line. I still believe that no story is completely fantasy, but just because she looks like me doesn't mean we're the same person.


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