Auch wenn die Mama recht hat. Die Erfahrung müssen sie dennoch selber machen

Max sat at his desk, the cursor blinking like a mocking heartbeat. His protagonist, Moe Levy, was supposed to be having a breakthrough in chapter three, but instead, Moe was sitting in a chair, staring at the wall, refusing to move. "I can't do it," Max muttered to the empty room. "I don't know what he's supposed to say." He’s supposed to say he’s sorry, a voice whispered. It wasn't Moe. It was Charlotte Prickles, the hedgehog from his children's series, who had taken to appearing on his desk lamp, looking uncharacteristically somber. "You’re hiding behind my adventures, Max. But Moe needs to face the music." Max rubbed his temples. The dwarf, Apasmara, was perched on the spine of a dictionary, swinging his legs. "Arme Lola," the dwarf chirped, the words bouncing off the walls. "Stop it," Max snapped. "I’ve written the flashbacks. I’ve shown the record shop. I’ve shown the Texan. I’ve shown the disappearance. What more does she want?" She doesn't want anything, Charlotte said softly, her quills rustling. That’s the problem. You’re still writing her as a character in your tragedy. You’re still making her the victim of your plot. But she’s not in this book anymore, Max. She’s in a Zen center, playing a sarod, raising a son, and living a life that has nothing to do with your faltering career or your midlife crisis. Max stared at the screen. The truth hit him with the force of a physical blow. He had been using Lola as a muse for his misery, a convenient symbol of his own failures. He had been mourning the loss of her, but he hadn't been mourning her. He had been mourning the mirror she held up to his own inadequacies. "Arme Lola," Max whispered again, but this time the words tasted like ash. It wasn't a lament for her; it was a confession of his own blindness. He reached out and highlighted the last three chapters, the ones where Moe Levy obsessively searched for a lost love in rainy alleyways. With a trembling finger, he hit delete. Moe Levy stood up from the chair in Max’s mind. The protagonist took a breath, looked out the window, and walked out the door, leaving the past behind. Max leaned back, the room silent save for the hum of the computer. He had finally let her go, not by finding her, but by admitting that she had never really belonged to him in the first place.