Bob found himself grinning as his fingers danced over the keys. The writing was terrible, which was perfect. All he needed to do was write something, anything, and tell Derrick it was Eyes of the Forest. The boy seemed a bit simple, so it wouldn’t be hard to convince him.

Letting go had allowed Bob to write two pages in less than twenty minutes. He’d just starting plunking away. It helped that he was alone. Derrick had gotten up early to drive to school. After taking Bob to the bathroom, he had replenished the pile of healthy food. Before leaving, he had reminded Bob how important it was to write. Really write.

This was the result.

Why was Rowan on the coast? What coast? Who had hired the soldiers chasing him? How had he managed to escape the blade aimed at his throat? When had his speech gotten so flowery? Bob had no idea about any of it, but he’d danced on the edge of the precipice before. It reminded him of writing King of Swords, which had almost been an out-of-body experience, as if he was taking dictation. And this time, he probably wouldn’t need to smooth the edges down until all the pieces fit together.

Suddenly it all seemed so easy. It might come down to how fast he could type. Bob thought he typed about forty words per minute. That was—he multiplied in his head—twenty-four hundred words an hour. And what else was there to do in this room? He could easily write eight hours a day, or about twenty thousand words. His last book had been one hundred fifty thousand words. Theoretically, in a little more than a week, Derrick would be turning him loose.

But now that Bob’s fingers were no longer moving, reality sank in. Thinking he could write an entire book in a week was the kind of math he did whenever he stepped on the scale and found that for some unknown reason, he’d lost a pound. In a single day, a whole pound had just disappeared! Giddy, Bob would immediately start projecting. In a week, he could be down seven. If he kept it up, soon he would be at his goal weight. Never again would his doctor make those faces about his spare tire.

But of course it never worked like that. The next day Bob would actually be back to his old weight or even above it, his “loss” erased.

Still, even if it took him weeks, this was a way forward, one a typewriter encouraged in ways a computer could not. Since Derrick hadn’t provided him with any correction fluid, there was no way to fix mistakes. Without the red computer underline, Bob wasn’t even sure if he was correctly spelling every word. All he could do was concentrate on plot. And why use a single word when four would do? This was freewriting on steroids.