In which a poet named Juniper meets a faceless streamer who goes by Corpse Husband.
With all the joys of releasing her first book, there also comes set backs. Having a strong support system and people around you who care is the only thing keeping J...
In new situations, all the trickiest rules are ones nobody bothers to explain to you. ~ Rainbow Rowell
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"Shit." I swear under my breath. No matter how many times you read through something, it's like the typos never end. The submission for my final manuscript is due tomorrow and I feel like I'm not even close to being ready. In reality, I've been done with it for well over a month now. But each time I do a read through, I find something that I don't like or grammar that doesn't fit correctly.
Being a writer has never been easy. It's never easy for anyone out there who wants to write professionally. Finding someone who wants to even glance at your work is a struggle, let alone publish it. You have to train yourself to not get too attached to anything because even if you pour your heart and soul into something, publishers may take one look, hate your first sentence, and toss it to the side.
It can be really heartbreaking when you're in that position. At that point, do you keep writing soul-bearing papers or do you write solemnly to get paid? That's the real question. I went through several heartbreaks to find Kimmie. Kimmie isn't some big named manager but she saw something in my stuff that got my foot in the door.
Since then, I've been working my ass off for this exact moment. A moment where I can be hit submit and then be done with all the stress of writing and editing and, in turn, focus on the stress of waiting. I've been writing this book for almost eight years. I started it in high school.
To think I'm just about done is insane. I don't think it's even hit me just yet that I'm at the finish line. I've spent so much time with my head stuck in my laptop screen that days started to blend a couple of times. My best friend Rae is the only person who's kept me in reality, thank god for her. I've felt terrible being so distant these past couple of weeks, but she knows that the deadline is tomorrow so she's been understanding of my lack of responses.
Speaking of, I pull up my phone screen to double check the time and that's when I see that she tried to call me about an hour ago. I make a mental note to spend another half hour on this before calling it a night. So that's what I do. I go through the pages one by one from the beginning and actually get to a point where I feel satisfied with what's there.
I make sure to save everything before exiting the software and shutting off my laptop. I lean over my couch to snatch my charger from the ground to plug it into the port. Too many times I've forgotten to charge my computer and had to wait a solid five minutes for it to turn back on. I definitely need to invest in a new one.
Once everything is put away and charging, I take my phone out and open up my text messages with Rae. Even though I know she stays up late, I decide to send her a text just in case she called it early.
Messages
Hey girlie, sorry I missed ur call I was working on the book all day #dead 11:23 pm
No worries! I was just checking in on you, call me tomorrow <3 11:25 pm
Okay, will do 11:26 pm
Having someone to call your best friend is probably the most amazing thing a person can have the privilege's of possessing. I'd be absolutely no where without her and she knows it too. Too many people these days aren't genuine. You find yourself in a position where you give way more to someone than they'd ever consider giving to you. People are just so selfish, it's awful.
With Rae, our friendship has always been pure. Always. Only fights we ever got in were over one of us doing something stupid or if we were drinking a little too much and had to babysit the other on the toilet. But there's never been a earth rattling issue.
With Rae being slightly famous on the internet, I'm well informed with the terrible people that end up being in her same community. She's a streamer online and basically gets paid to play video games with people. I'd like to say I'm jealous but I've never once touched a controller, let alone any kind of PC game. What she does it incredible and I've always been nothing but supportive.
Being so in a hole lately with my book stuff, I've barely been on my phone at all. I've never really been on social media much to begin with but definitely haven't been these past couple of weeks. I really only use Twitter because it's what I use to tweet a lot of poetry related stuff. I gained quite a following from it but never anything like Rae. The main reason I use Twitter, the real reason, is to support Rae in whatever events she's taking part in.
I like to know what's going on in her world just like how she's constantly checking up on me and what's going on in mine.
She has some sort of charity even coming up that she mentioned like a week ago for a suicide prevention nonprofit organization. I want to tune in for at least a part of it so I can see what she's doing, only thing is that I don't remember what day it was on.
Being sure she tweeted about it at some point, I head to her page and scroll through her recent tweets. A majority of what she posts are links to videos of hers or retweets of videos she was in. But I do manage to find the flyer for the event. It's tomorrow night and luckily for me, I'll be free of all book obligations by then. My time is hers.
As I'm looking at the flyer, I read over the different names of the people that are going to be streaming with her. I recognize maybe two names but the rest are foreign. I've never really understood people's choices for usernames but more power to them for going with it.
I remember Pokimane from a stream Rae did with her a while back playing Animal Crossing and I actually considered buying the game for myself at one point because it looked so damn cute. I know Jacksepticeye because my brother used to watch him a lot when we were younger and I still think it's crazy that she knows him now.
The rest of the names I don't know. Like Sykkuno, Toast, Corpse, and Brooke. I love how everyone has these crazy names and then there's Brooke. They all seem to be well known streamers and their followers seem excited about this event. I'm really happy for her and I can't wait to watch.
At some point I set my phone down and get up off the couch to get ready for bed. It's midnight by now and I'm exhausted. A headache has invaded my brain and my eyes are sore from staring at a screen all day. I even wince as I turn on my bathroom lights.
Once my teeth are brushed, face washed, and pajamas on, I go back to the living room and go back to my phone to see the time again. A few emails from Kimmie pop up as I do so and I make sure to answer them right away. I'm not sure when it happened but I eventually found myself getting really sleepy. Last thing I remember before knocking out was hitting send on my responding email back to Kimmie.
