The next morning as I woke up to the smell of my own decaying poop I pondered the topic of inspiration for a while.

As usual with philosophy and art and shit my thinking went around and around in circles until it arrived at the Ancient Greeks.

I’d read somewhere that the Greeks believed inspiration was divine - came straight from the Gods and Goddesses you know, maybe I’m drawing my ideas straight from Apollo and Dionysus.

Anyway…

I got up, and used the water to wash out my blanket. The thing had been a sort of greeny-brown, but as the dirt and little insects washed away from it I saw that it was more of a yellow.

It took me ages to find somewhere to dry it - eventually, I settled for that hatch that would open when I ordered food. The thing had a pretty powerful spring, so by jamming my blanket in the hatch I was able to keep it hanging.

After that I took a swig of water, then used at least twenty litres and a strip of my shirt to wash the floor of the cell. Again - it was all just blood and dust and human filth. But by the time I was finished I was looking at some pretty darn shiny cobblestones.

‘There we go,’ I said to myself, ‘All it needs now is a couple anime posters, a reading chair and a lava lamp and it’d be a sweet space to hang.’

After that I sat down and updated A Victim of Webfiction, I only managed one chapter, and if i’m honest it was a pretty measly one. You see, the one trouble with writing about your own life is there are long, boring stretches where nothing notable really happens.

Sure, I got kidnapped and forced into debt-slavery, starved, shot at with water, and made an enemy. But apart from that I’ve just been shitting in a bucket and getting bitten by flea-things.

So, I took a mini break - did some push ups, then made a deal with myself that I wouldn’t stop writing The One Who Walks Alone until the blanket was dry.

The first part of the stretch was hell. I wrote a (kind of) plot for the chapter…

Sparrow meets a hooded figure who tries to kick Sparrow’s ass. Sparrow beats him using stonefist. Sparrow gains a magic item (magic poopbucket?)

The more I stared at the sentence, the more I hated it. Like… what was Sparrow going to do with a poop bucket when he’s out in the middle of the woods. He can poop anywhere he wants!

After that I started thinking about trees and philosophising about whether trees poop or not. And then bam! There it was… the idea I’d been looking for.

Forest god turns Sparrow into a tree.

Simple, yet brilliant… It's amazing how you can be sitting there for ages just staring at a blank screen, then you get that single grain of inspiration and suddenly you can see how you’re going to create an entire chapter (or book) from it.

Three chapters leapt straight from the Gods to my mind and then from my mind to a cloud-based server, then from there into a hundred readers’ imaginations.

As I finished the last one I felt my blanket - it was dry. And I decided I quite enjoyed having a timer.

Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to keep wetting the blanket so I puzzled for an hour on how to make my own clock.

Then Alex called, Great I thought to myself. The highlight of my day.

‘Three fictions!’ was the first thing he said, ‘Three fictions! Are you out of your mind?’

I just shrugged, ‘More words more views right?’

Alex shook his head, ‘Yes more words, but not more fictions.’ He rubbed his cherry blossom tie between two fingers, ‘Authors get killed when they do what you’re doing.’

‘I’m just writing!’

‘No, you’re starting one fiction after another, never completing them. Your only saving grace is that you’re not massively popular yet - you’re still a hidden gem, but if you get popular then the fans are going to expect constant updates and if they see you starting new fictions willy nilly then they will crucify you man. You will get swallowed up and shat right back out.’

‘Speaking of shitting…’ I held up my poop bucket, ‘Any chance you could do something about this.’

‘Sure,’ He mopped his forehead with his tie, ‘Costs a hundred reads to empty one of those babies.’

‘WHAT!?! You’re telling me that emptying a goddamn poop can is worth the same as ten rice crackers?’ I yelled, then paused and thought about the smell.

‘Oh yeah, actually, I can live with that.’

Alex pressed a button and a little indent opened up in the wall. I placed my poop bucket into the indent, a section of the wall slid into place, and there was a whooshing sound as the bucket was transported away.

‘Suppose I have to pay for a new poop bucket now do I?’

Alex shook his head, ‘You get your damn poop bucket back for free. It just takes a couple minutes.’

He sighed, ‘Listen, everything has be the hard way with you doesn’t it? Our other author managers don’t have to deal with half the shit I do.’

‘That’s because you kidnapped me,’ I said, ‘In my book kidnappers don’t get to play the victim card.’

He clutched his tie and gave another sigh, ‘I’ve made up my mind, I’m transferring you to a four-dorm.’

‘A four dorm?’ I raised my hand and started stretching my middle finger, waggling it at the camera.

‘Yeah,’ he said, sounding more tired than anything, ‘Currently, you’re in a basement guesthouse, which is our lowest cost form of accommodation for authors. The next step up is a single dorm, basically a concrete room like the one you’re in, only you can stand up in it and there’s a small standing desk in the corner that you can use to write with.

A four-dorm is basically that, only the concrete rooms are connected to a central work area. You’ll be able to work with other authors, and I think that would be very good for you. You’re driving me nuts.’

‘Sounds good by me,’ I said, ‘How many reads does that cost?’

‘A hundred thousand a month, and that needs to be paid upfront.’ He rubbed the side of his head, ‘I’m going to wangle things around a bit so that you can move to a dorm today. What that means is you won’t be able to spend a single read until you pay that 100,000 reads.’

I shook my head, ‘No. I’m not even getting 20,000 reads a day. You’re saying I won’t be able to eat, buy water for like a week!?!’

‘That’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make,’ Alex said, ‘Besides it might get you to focus more on a single story.’

‘You piece of shit!’ I yelled, ‘You can’t do this!’

‘I’ve already done it,’ Alex said, ‘The guards are coming to get you now. Remember to bring your tablet, keyboard, dish and blanket, the poop bucket will be transferred.’ he rubbed the side of his nose, ‘This is a good four-dorm you’re moving into. They’re hard workers. Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two.’

‘I’ll steal your stupid tie and choke you with it! I’ll smash your face against a wall, i’ll…’

A small door on the side of my cell swung open. A guard peeked in, ‘Come on buddy, I hear you’ve been upgraded.’

I shook my head, ‘That’s a lie.’

The guard just shrugged, ‘Nope, you’ve been upgraded.’

‘I can’t afford that dorm,’ I said, ‘If I go i’m not going to be able to eat for a week.’

Another hand reached into my tiny cell, grabbed my leg. I heard a voice say, ‘Got him!’ Then they started to pull.

I tried to stop myself from being dragged. My keyboard was on the other side of the room and I could see my blanket hanging from the vent. The guards jerked me backwards.

I wrapped my arms around the tablet, cradling it to my chest, then started kicking out and screaming. The guards wrestled me to the ground outside my cell. I saw one of the guys’ legs and just bit down on it. He screamed and gave me a kick in the stomach.

I coughed and crawled to my feet, the other guard tackled me, but then I spun and punched him in the nose, he howled, and drips of blood started to run down his face. His buddy-guard had got his baton out and started bashing me with it – head ribs, arms, mouth. There was nothing I could do except curl into a ball and wait for the attack to be over.

Eventually they ran out of steam, dragged me to my feet and pulled me down the hallway.

‘You stupid bastard!’ the first guard said, ‘people usually fight when they’re taken from the dorms to the basement – you’re doing it the wrong way round.’

‘I gotta eat,’ I tried to murmur, but it came out all twisted because of the blood that was filling my mouth.

They dragged me up stairs, then into an elevator. Eventually We entered a corridor that was shabby, but better lit than the corridor we’d come from. As they dragged me I tried to tilt my head so that my blood landed on the floor. It was petty – but I wanted to make as big a mess as I could so that they’d have to clean it.

They knocked my forehead against the doorframe as they dragged me into the dorm. I heard a woman yelling, then the door slamming behind the guards.

They dragged me into the room and threw me in a heap on the floor. One of the guards pulled my tablet from his packet and threw it on the concrete next to me.

‘You happy pal?! You happy now?’

I snorted back a mouthful of blood, ‘Nah. I’m not happy. But I’m not you and that’s good enough for me.’

One of the guys spat – it landed on my chest in a big sticky wad, ‘That could’ve been so much easier buddy.’

Then they left. As soon as the door of the apartment closed two heads appeared in my blurry vision.

‘Oh shit!’ A woman said, ‘They really messed you up dude.’

I tried to focus my eyes on her. Her hair looked like it had been hacked at with a knife, and she was using the pull tops of a soft drink can in each ear instead of earrings.

She looked like an angel.