Page 66 of Script Swap
And then I stared at the screen.The list of edits that still needed to be made swam in my eyes.Will Gower was cold.Will Gower was unlikable.The story didn’t have any heart.Why can’t he be like—fill in the blank.My chest tightened.It got harder and harder to take a full breath.
Something wild, something close to panic, started digging in its claws.
Fine.Forget revisions.I’d write something new.I’d write that idea I had earlier.About—about—
What had it been about?
It didn’t matter.I had a million ideas.I could write something completely fresh and new.I didn’t evenneedan idea.I’d start with a title, and I’d build the story out from there, following my natural instinct for storytelling.
I needed a title.
A minute turned into two.
Two turned into five.
This was stupid.This was so stupid.I was tired, and I was emotionally drained, and I—
And I wasn’t a good writer.
It came at me like a Mack truck out of the dark, headlights blazing, and it slammed into me.
That was the bottom line.I wasn’t a good writer.I wasn’tanygood at writing.I’d tried hard.I’d done my best.And my best was a handful of mediocre short stories, a single pathetic attempt at a novel, and alotof rejections.
I wasn’t a good writer.
No, scratch that.
I was a bad writer.
And I wasn’t going to get any better.
I put my laptop aside.I stretched out in the chair.It hurt to breathe, but it wasn’t a sharp pain.It was more like raw skin.Like I’d been scoured, inside and out, every nerve left aching.But my chest wasn’t tight anymore, and for the first time in a long, long time, I felt…relaxed.
I was a bad writer.I could be bad.
I must have fallen asleep because the sound of the door opening made me jolt upright.The room was dark now, and for a moment, I didn’t remember where I was, or why every inch of me felt stretched out, ill-used, distressed—a general, dispersed soreness, the way I remembered feeling when I’d been a child, the few times I’d cried myself to sleep.
Light unfolded across the old rug, and a silhouette darkened the doorway.
“You were asleep,” Bobby said.
“No.I mean, yeah, but I’m awake.”And then clarity worked its way through me.“Hey, you’re here.Is everything okay?”
Bobby slipped into the room.He moved easily through the darkness, barely more than a shape until he perched on the hassock.My legs were still stretched out, and now his hand found my foot and squeezed gently.“I was going to ask you that.”He waited, and when I didn’t say anything, he added, “That was a lot today.At the theater.”
“It was a debacle,” I said.“I think that’s the technical term.”
Bobby rubbed my foot.When he spoke again, his voice was cautious.“They searched the crawlspace above the dressing room.”
“And they found a body.”
He traced a nod in the gloom.“Male.ID is still pending.”The break in his words was small but noticeable.“He was up there a long time.”
“God.”
“What about Milton?”
“Charges dropped.He’s back home, as far as I know.”
