He listened to this podcast about habit hacking, and the guy said that ninety-nine percent of writer’s block is just the mind looking for distraction. But there’s nothing to distract him now, and he’s still stuck.
His gaze flicks to the Moleskine.
He started buying them after he saw an author he admired talking online about fresh starts, beginnings and middles and ends, multitudes contained within each single slim softcover.
He has a whole stack of them, the first few pages used, the next two hundred blank, but he can’t stop buying them, each time hoping this will be the time the habit sticks.
This one he bought to finish the series.
It looks battered, thanks to months spent in his back pocket, or the bottom of his bag, but the pages inside are blank. He’s never even cracked the cover.
Fuck-up, he thinks, even though his therapist frequently reminds him to exercise compassion with himself. But compassion isn’t going to fix his broken career. Compassion isn’t going to win this competition.
You don’t have a shot in hell.
That was his first thought when he heard about the challenge.
It’s been his only thought, every passing hour since.
But awful as it is, the pool of applicants has gotten smaller. When it comes to the people standing between him and the prize, Kenzo is probably the one to beat. Man, that would feel good.
He puts his glasses on, as if that will bring things into focus. And in a weird way, it kind of does. A little Pavlovian response inside his head, a voice so much smaller than the others, whispering,Hell yeah, it’s time to write. He cracks his neck and brings his hands to rest on the black-and-white keys. That’s progress, isn’t it? Of course, there’s still one glaring problem.
When it comes to Fletch’s magnum opus, he doesn’t have a fucking clue.
He read the pages, and it’s not like they aren’t good—they are, and he can see a dozen ways the story could have gone. But compared to what he’s always done, the genre is so grounded, so down to earth, sosmall. The lives are measured in the ones and twos, not millions. The stakes, likewise condensed.
Jaxon frowns, fingers rapping on the keys, not hard enough to call the letters, just enough to feel the give, the metal resistance before the stroke.
Tap tap tap.
Tap tap tap.
He rereads the last page Fletch ever wrote, the tension mounting as Julia Petrarch enters the tunnel, having finally cornered the killer she’s been stalking for the last four books. The concrete chamber, silent save for the drip of old pipes, and the voice in her head as she opens the door.
I should have known.
Jaxon closes his eyes, trading the room for the dark behind his lids, a darkness he has always thought as deep space. But it could be something else. Take away the grand set pieces, the interplanetary war, and the central core has more similarities than differences. It all comes down to ego. To arrogance. And to legacy.
Whether it’s the captain of a battleship in space or a detective, in over her head. Both stare into the darkness and find their own reflections staring back.
His eyes pop open.
There’ssomethingthere. It wavers like an aura at the edge of his thoughts. The truth is, this is when he’d usually fuck off, when the nervous energy of almost, but not quite, having something would make him abandon the task, escape into his phone, or take off on a run. But the phone is locked in the safe, and he’s locked in this room, and there’s nothing else to do but face the work.
So Jaxon takes a deep breath and begins to type.
The first few lines are halting. But then a strange thing happens. He begins to find his stride. It’s like legs loosening after the first mile of a run—stiff at first, and full of doubt, but then a kind of flow.
And holy shit, how long has it been since writing felt this good? Since the words came tripping out, since he felt the alchemy of converting thoughts to squat black letters to words to people speaking to scenes building, to movies playing in his head?
It’s just Oswald Jackson Jr. and the space under his bed.
It’s Jaxon Knight and the blank page, which isn’t blank anymore, because the story’s spilling out.
And it’s good. It’s really fucking good.
So good he’s kind of annoyed when he hears the bedroom door swing open beneath therat-a-tatof keys, the outside world intruding on his flow.
