At a minimum, freewriting might get out some of the sludge filling his head. Then with luck, he’d actually write something decent. Some of Bob’s best characters, his most surprising images had come from freewriting.

But that had been when he was writing the first book or two. The pressure to make Eyes of the Forest perfect had paralyzed him. Freewriting no longer felt serious enough. Productive enough.

The last time he’d tried to freewrite, Bob had given up after a few minutes, with no consequences. Now he couldn’t.

Freewriting was like a singer warming up by singing scales. If Bob just kept typing, if he pushed back the weight of inertia and fear, then maybe he would find his way to the book. Or at least an indelible image. An unexpected character. A fresh simile.

He’d been stuck long before he met Derrick. It had been painful, but at least it hadn’t been life threatening. The writer Samuel Johnson had said the prospect of hanging concentrated the mind wonderfully, but the prospect of being maimed did not seem to be having the same effect on Bob.

There is too much of me. My thighs chafe from pushing past each other. My breaths leave my mouth like faint smoke. I wonder how many breaths I have left.

Less thinking. More writing. I miss my characters. Or do I? Maybe I miss life.

Even as a child, Bob had been odd and lonely. He had a freakish imagination and no ready outlet for it. His parents were always after him to “go outside and play with your friends,” when he had no friends or interest in the outdoors. Instead, he had collected Lego figures, giving them all names, elaborate backstories, and current conflicts. His first true friend had been Lilly, who he had met playing Dungeons and Dragons in college.

This cabin is a prison, and this room a cell within it. Or have I been my own prison?

When Bob started writing as an adult, he hadn’t known how to, but it hadn’t mattered. After Lilly left him, writing had been a way to fill up the empty evening and weekend hours. If his life was featureless and gray, then he would create a fantasy that was anything but. The first book had taken three years to write and two to sell, and then just for twelve thousand dollars. But before it was even published, the reviews were rapturous.

The words won’t come. They are hiding. My fingers punch the keys anyway.

The common wisdom was that writers were either planners or pantsers—people who wrote by the seat of their pants. Bob was a pantser. People refused to believe it. How could he have created all those different lands and people and magic without planning? They didn’t understand that thinking up details was effortless. It was keeping them straight later that was hard.