Magnum Opus

The New York Times #1 Best Selling Author L. Diamond was a much different person than the empty-handed, hollow-hearted Laura D. Simonds. 

And sure, they really were, in fact, one and the same, but much has changed in the past 7 years.

The back of Laura D. Simond’s mind brimmed with a constant, caustic simmer of unwritten ideas. She always tried to make something of them—to note them down as soon as a cohesive plot so much as occupied her headspace, but as she put her fingers to the keyboard, her left foot bouncing in a near spastic motion as nerves racked her entire being, no tangible story was ever made.

This was in stark contrast to L. Diamond. The hopeful, self-proclaimed wordsmith put her pen to paper just as inspiration seized her, jotting down key plot points and dialogue with a deftness many seasoned authors still lack, often completing entire chapters in hours until her hand cramped something awful. She then transcribed her messy, hurried handwriting (only illegible to the untrained eye, she’d so often say) onto her laptop. She finished her first novel with a method that smoothly operated like clockwork. This author had much to offer the literary world.

Laura, on the other hand, did not.

With this newer version of herself, whatever half-baked idea brewed in her thoughts never came to see the light of day.

It was truly ironic for this to be her new truth, as she was a breakout hit in the Young Adult supernatural romance genre, having published her debut novel that featured elements of fantasy entangled into a love triangle under a pseudonym she’d made up on the spot. At 25, she doesn’t think she can live up to the name she’s built for herself.

L. Diamond is not Laura D. Simonds. Those 2 people are entirely, vastly different in nature. The 18-year-old, bright-eyed, and optimistic Laura that hid behind her pen name was ready to write whatever she could write, no matter what. Her older self longed for that blinding, youthful optimism back.

Before, she felt freer. 

So free that she thought divulging her identity wouldn’t change a thing; that she’s the same person anyway, and she was just using another name. She’d still be able to write and write and cast a spell on her readers—one of shock and awe and a release from reality as they’d dive into her fiction. Her work would have the same effect, under her real name or not. 

But Laura knew, she knew, oh god did she know, that with all this positive public interest, the inevitable, despicable media attention would come to match. After all, she’d been born in a post-Twilight era. She understood how plain mean everyone could be. Still, she figured she could handle it all. Maybe this would develop her tough skin and resilient attitude. Maybe this could make her a stronger public figure, a more renowned author.

Disclosing her true self could be a step forward.

And so it was a moment of exciting, curious, possibly freeing liberty…

...and a fleeting one, at that.

Immediately, the bookish masses took to furiously besmirching every ounce of dignity Laura had left. They condemned her work as though it were criminal. They’d call it a disgrace to literature, an outright offensive piece of shit. This aversion thrived in the more advanced digital age, where any sort of repulsion one had towards the book could so easily be directed at and delivered straight to the artificially illuminated laptop screen of the real Laura D. Simonds. The bandwagon backlash would make the late 2000's-esque Stephenie Meyer hate look like a light, respectful bout of critique.

That was her first mistake.

It turned out that having your real name under strangers’ tongues would give them even more power. The criticism hit harder after they found out she was under 20 (where’s the credibility?, they’d question, as if you needed credentials to write a work of fiction). The aspiring writer learned one very significant concept about online personas. 

Those who hid behind façades proved to be more fearless. Behind a screen and an avatar that wasn’t them, people grew brave. They were brave and brash and bold with their opinions in a way the young writer couldn’t handle. They’d seem to think that some false identity would erase their faults—that their words, noxious, lethal, laced with malicious intent and the dangerous touch of boredom would pose as an afterthought more or less harmless to whoever they’re against. That, or they truly carried with them the determination to drive L. Diamond/Laura D. Simonds off the face of this earth.

It was as though they’d stolen her courage to climb to the top—they’d stripped her of the heart to take risks and the will to express herself, tearing her down to the bottom, dead last and faced with the harsh reality of publicity at a quite a young age.

(But how could all those child celebrities handle it?

Right, they never really do). 

Fantasy was all too far removed for Laura, now. She felt trapped. She didn’t know any kind of escape anymore because her one form of it had been taken so cruelly from her.

Gone were the crowds of fans that cried praise be to her first and only novel. Their rowdy wails for a sequel and explanations for if her protagonist, the witch Astoria, ended up with warlock Elijah or angel Arian were drowned out by the sea of hate that crashed so violently, so inexplicably against the shores of Laura’s social media platforms. Everywhere she looked, disdain for what she once considered her Magnum Opus took over, suspending any belief that it was even worth a read.

It was a step forward in the wrong direction.

She tried to be silent. Then she tried to fight back. She had valid counters, really, but would anyone pay her any mind?

This was her second mistake. Everything worsened after she tried defending herself, snowballing into something much, much more uncontrollable than she’d ever imagined.

She thought:

Should everything published be groundbreaking? Should it be so original and new and fully devoid of clichés? I’m not fucking Shakespeare, am I? 

Surely not every piece of literature is a work of art. Take for example the dozens of other similar tales catered to the same teenage demographic that included supernatural elements. If they really hated that one genre,

Then why my book?

Why pick apart something I worked so fucking hard for?

The ache bloomed in her chest, crawling up her throat and stinging the back of her eyes as she held up her phone to her face. She laid lifelessly atop her messy bedsheets, the harsh cold glow of the screen in an otherwise dark room casting a doleful blue light upon her tear-streaked face.

Why me?

And one day, while pacing endlessly around the confined room of her dormitory bedroom, she realized she had to make a decision. 

Because they found out where she went to college.

What followed was the fated flood of threats and mentions of stalking, and, be it mindless jokes or not, her family’s concern for her safety took over. She was basically still a kid, after all. Who would have thought it could get this ruthless, this heartless?

She remembered how it had been-

She remembered how her mother busted through the door, calling out her name and looking around the unfurnished space with frantic eyes and a worried heart. She’d call, but Laura didn’t hear it. She couldn’t hear it. 

(She didn’t want to because it meant that the debacle of all this had surfaced onto her once comfortable, normal life. It meant that any and all possible safe spaces had, at last, been invaded by the faceless names who’d made it their life goal to ruin her life.)

“Laura, honey,” she’d repeat, each time more desperate than the last, “Come home again.”

The world may have shattered her, but Anna Simonds was not giving up on her daughter. She never would. Still, the vacancy in the young writer’s chest only grew the louder her mother's voice rang through the room.

“Laur, love,” the older woman, stout, with hair dyed the color of straw and deep laugh lines that creased the sides of her cheeks, said again, a little softer this time as she stood right by the door, “I care about you, darling."

It was then when the unceasing silence had been broken by an eruption of sniffles and stifled crying that traced back to underneath a pile of blankets. Her mother traipsed towards the sound source, carefully peeling away the layers of some woven white cotton material to reveal the weeping mess that was her daughter—gasping for air in between sobs, strands of hazelnut tresses licking at her temples, lurid amber irises darkened into a shade of dark, earthen, despondent brown as she looked up to the anxious face of her mother. She looked so young, all coddled up in that corner of her bed, with her loosely-hung, threadbare pajama t-shirt, pillow, and parts of the blankets that shrouded her were damp with her tears. 

Anna pulled her only child into a tight embrace. It was all she could do, for now. 

Time bends in profound moments of feeling. Mere days stretch into eternity with just the right amount of hurt, with the sordid touch of pain, and minutes one would wish lasted forever are bound to be cut short into fractions of a second.

And it was in these short moments, enveloped in the arms of her mom when Laura made her decision to disappear for a while. Until everyone forgets. Until they move onto their next obsession (likely to be very soon, given their short attention spans).

Where’d she go?, they’d wonder, Did we finally get rid of that godawful one-hit wonder?

But the writer didn't cave. She didn't want to give them the satisfaction of her strained response.

Any retelling of her woes as a once-successful turned debased and demeaned public figure should not at all be meant to highlight the woes of being famous and the downright atrocious backlash that came with it. No, all this was not meant to be a pity party for the ruined name of L. Diamond. This was meant to show the most outrageous way in which the passionate Laura had lost the fire that burned so ardently within her, the flames that inspired her to write. Nothing else could have stopped her, and she stood by such a notion. Nothing else could have stopped her and so maybe this was a fucked up dash of kismet. Maybe if Laura never stopped writing, she’d never been able to establish a closer bond with her family (especially her mom), or meet her best friend in the library where she broke down, or even take a leave from college only to be instantly offered a wonderful job at a publishing house for figures she’d only dreamed of having as a graduate. Hell, in hindsight, the commercial success of her debut novel severely outweighed the emotional toil it brought with it (even if she only accepted this a few years after). The real damage it did was make writing harder for her. Sometimes it even felt more like a chore for her, as she'd lost the drive to complete any creative thing at all.

And so where did all this leave the formerly shamed novelist?

It left her to wonder. She wondered where it all went wrong (or if it really did go wrong at all). Sat in front of her very well-used, quite aged desktop computer, Laura stared into a blank MS word page. Squinting, her hands hovered over the keyboard, contemplating what she should write exactly. She had just gotten a week off from work, debating on whether to use this newfound free time to jump back into her old hobby.

And no, any hate she’d get was something just not on her mind anymore. She’d experienced the worst of it, and if even more was to come, what the fuck could she do about it? Frankly, Laura was tired (and so over all that bullshit). There’s no bigger fuck you than being completely unbothered by comments meant to rile you up.

However, she had come to know a few things for a fact, such as-

Why she didn’t write fantasy anymore: she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. It was too traumatic.

In fact, she could never come up with any fully realized fictitious narrative. Fiction was a genre not very dissimilar to the book she’s written she so painstakingly tried (and failed) to forget and put behind her. As vast as fiction seems to be, Laura doesn’t think she can stomach any more tales of the unreal. Can she even-

Oh.

She figured, then and there, exactly what was the case. She only then realized how she struggled that much because her craft was tainted with the agonizing memory of her old way of writing. But she had grown from it now. Sure, she’s become a chronic overthinker with the tendency to self-doubt, but maybe non-fiction was the way to go. She can’t possibly get too caught up with a plot that’s actually happened. If she wrote about reality, whose right would it be to nitpick clichés or overused plot points? Now, it’s all about the execution (even if it always was).

Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out.

And so she typed in:

My name is Laura D. Simonds. You may not know me, but maybe you’ll recognize the name I so recklessly abandoned—L. Diamond.

What better story to write than one truly of her own?