For a few weeks I settled into a little routine – wake up, write a chapter, eat, go out to the shared area, sit at the desk and talk with Astra and Hera while Victor glared at me.

I’d pump out another few chapters, grab some lunch, then go to Astra’s room where her, Hera and I would do a daily dance/workout sesh. She’d managed to get her laptop speakers working. Unfortunately, she didn’t have many reads to spare so we danced to four songs on rotation.

‘It’s good for the bones,’ Astra would say to me as she put on Crazy Frog or Darude Sandstorm for the 500th time.

It felt... almost normal.

Sure, I still tried to shit on Alex during our daily calls, and he tried to shit on me. But we were starting to develop something resembling a slaver relationship. (kinda like a working relationship, but yeah... I was a slave).

Each day I managed to pump out about five chapters, usually this would be one or two on A Victum of Webfiction, then the rest on The One Who Walks Alone. Occasionally when I needed a break from them both I’d put out a few chapters of Syria Girl, but that book was more of a hobby – it had barely any views.

Now that I had the comfort of knowing I’d be fed each day I also started to focus on the bigger picture – if I could cultivate my writing ability I’d be able to push out better chapters more often.

In the evening when I couldn’t think any more I practised touch typing. I started to create plot outlines for The One Who Walks Alone. I used some of my precious reads to flick through a book called On Writing by some guy named Stephen King. It was more than worth it.

The more I cultivated my writing ability the more confident I grew. My ratings were just going up and up and the comments were mostly positive.

ShuFuman

Funny and tragic, impatient and resigned and very angry

Aster loka

Eli must pay off his debt by creating more fiction to drive the platform forward, while also earning enough views to afford things like... basic food.

It's a very entertaining meta-story, author-progression story, and I recommend it. It also includes (at least occasionally) comment-to-in-story interactions, so get commenting!

All in all my writing life was going good.

That is... until I posted a little chapter called Potatoes for breakfast. As I wrote the chapter I felt pretty good about it – it was less cynical – less angry at the world when compared to my other chapters.

In it, I mentioned how thankful I was for the people in my dorm, how thankful I was for my readers.

I posted the chapter and lay back on the floor. Usually I slept not too bad despite the concrete and cold. But for some reason that night I was wide awake and exhausted all at the same time.

I lay there with my eyes open willing myself to sleep.

When sleep wouldn’t come I powered on my laptop and decided to draft up a new chapter.

But when I got to the Crusher Books website I found that the little notification bell up top had a massive 1K flashing next to it.

‘What the hell?’ I whispered to myself, then clicked.

It was comments – hundreds and hundreds of comments on my last chapter – with a few new reviews thrown in too.

And they were bad.

Silverclipper

Worst chapter I’ve read this year. I was reading for the dark humour and the shit that happened to the MC. Now everything’s all rosy for him. Think I’m going to boil my eyes in some bleach.

Handis

Ugly, gross, too positive, no plot or character development. What even was that chapter Eli?

Blumateno

Author pulled this one out of his ass. Cares about views more than he cares about the storyline. I’m dropping this – and making a post in the forums about it.

Sammyjay

Poo

On and on they went. Every comment I read tore my heart out a little more – and I read every single one. I couldn’t stop.

By the time I had my morning call with Alex my eyes were black rings of darkness and my forehead had this sharp pain like a Harry Potter scar.

‘So...’ Alex said, ‘You seen the comments?’

He was wearing a orange tie with watermelons on it – it was probably the ugliest tie I’d ever seen on him.

I nodded, ‘Yeah. I seen them.’

‘You worried?’

I nodded and he grunted.

‘Good. You should be worried. At the rate things are going all these bad reviews could tank your career.’

He pinched his eyebrow, ‘It’s just a shame you posted such a shit chapter on A Victim Of Web Fiction. If it had been one of the other books it’d be easier to contain.’

‘Should I reply back to the comments?’ I asked.

‘No – there’s too many of them.’

‘Delete the chapter?’

‘Maybe... yeah... maybe that’s best. Only thing is, what are you gonna replace it with?’

I shrugged, ‘I don’t know. I thought it was good.’

‘Well clearly you thought wrong.’ Alex’s voice was harsh. He pulled at his hair, ‘This doesn’t just affect you, you know, I was lining up a pretty sweet bonus. If you don’t act fast I could lose that.’

I stared at him and he shook his head then spoke again, ‘Yep. I know that look, it’s all about you isn’t it Eli? That’s all you care about.’ Alex sighed, ‘look, just get another chapter up – and fast. The longer you leave it, the more people are gonna be turned off your story.’

And then he hung up.

I sat there, staring at the laptop. The pain felt worse than the beatings I’d taken. Maybe because it was the first time I’d hurt myself.

I shook my head, jumped on the Crusher Media website, ignored all the comments, and tried to think of a new way I could play out the chapter.

My fingers were poised over the keyboard, my eyes darted across the page, but nothing happened.

Shit.

I stared at the screen. Blank, white. Slowly little lines criss-crossed the screen forming a wall-like structure. I tried to push against the screen – push away the wall, but it wouldn’t budge. My hand stayed firm.

My door opened and it made me blink – the wall disappeared from the screen. I wondered if it had been there at all.

‘Hey,’ Astra said, ‘You’re late.’

‘I...’

‘Usually you’d be out by now. Victor’s happy about it – says it give him a chance to catch up.’ She took a seat beside me, resting her back against the concrete wall. ‘Just wanted to make sure you’re okay?’

I stared at the screen, ‘I think I’ve got writer’s block.’

She laughed, ‘No way – not you! The guy who cranks out five chapters a day without breaking a sweat. The guy who can do 2000 words without batting an eyelid, the guy...’

‘...yeah. That guy. I can’t write.’

Astra gave a sigh and put an arm around me, ‘Writing’s easy, you just sit down at your laptop and bleed.’

‘If only it was that simple, I’m good at bleeding. I’ve had plenty of practice at it since I arrived here. The thing I’m not so good at is writing myself out of a hole.’

She grimaced, then patted my knee, ‘You’ll get there Eli. It’s just words. Don’t overthink it.’

Then she was gone and I was sitting. Staring at my laptop.

Hoping to distract myself, I navigated to the Crusher Books homepage. There, on top, as always, was the wuxia story about the chicken.

I checked its stats – 10 million reads. Thousands of fans. Chapters three times a week every damn week for four years. A well funded Patreon.

How? I wondered. How can I compete with someone like that?

I went back to my page, hoping to transfer a little of the chicken story’s power into my own work.

Nothing.

I gave a sigh and shut down my laptop. Looking for something, anything other than writing to do.

The concrete was rough against my palms as I bent down to do a pushup. My elbows gave a click as I lowered myself, and my arms shook as I pushed myself back up.

‘One.’ I whispered to myself. I was already sweating.

I managed two pushups before I found myself facedown on the ground.

‘That’s not a good sign,’ I said, looking at my slightly withered arms, ‘I should do this more often.’

I used my blanket to wipe some dust into a corner, and folded the blanket in two. Then I stood there wishing I had a huge pile of socks or something I could fold to distract myself.

I found myself back on my laptop.

‘Okay... round two.’

Round two went about the same as round one – I sat there staring at the screen. I tried to type but every sentence I got on the screen was crap and I couldn’t hit the backspace button fast enough.

I thought about the chicken story – how I wished I could write like that. I looked back on my chapters – realised how crap they were. I could feel my heart thumping.

Shut up heart. I thought. It didn’t help.

So I did the only thing I had left to do. I ate some food. After that there was nothing left to do except mope about.

****

I managed to mope for an entire week. Every day Alex would call me, and every day he’d be more pissed off. The second day it was just screaming, by the fifth day he was threatening physical violence and punching his keyboard.

Unfortunately I didn’t get that much satisfaction from winding him up. Mostly because I was kind of worried myself. A Victim Of Online Fiction’s rating was tanking and its views were going down faster than glaciers next to a coal-powered factory.

Jujumama

Not only did ElitheHill leave us with the worst chapter in history – he also appears to have dropped the book.

RatsCats

How many ElitheHills does it take to replace a lightbulb?

- None, he prefers to leave us in the dark.

Honduras

ElitheHill – yo mama must’ve been so slow, it took her nine months to come up with this joke

Yoyono

ElitheHill out here giving Mad Snail a run for his money

And that was it – being compared to Mad Snail was about as bad as things could get. The dude was an insanely talented author, but he’d basically dropped his web novel. Updating once a month at most.

I used to hate him for it – now, I kinda understood how he felt.

As I lay in my room drowning in my own misery I got a knock on the door which was strange because Astra and Hera never knocked – they just barged right in.

‘Come in,’ I moaned.

It was Victor. He was grinning, ‘I’ve got something to show you man.’

‘Can it wait until after I’m finished sulking?’

‘No,’ He smiled, ‘In fact it might make you laugh.’

I got up and went into the shared room. Aster and Hera were in their rooms so the place was quiet and empty. Victor had a bag of chips in front of him. I licked my lips at the flavour – chicken . But the man didn’t offer them so I didn’t ask.

Instead he sat down on his computer chair and I sat on Astra’s. He brought up a site I hadn’t seen since I arrived in the gulag – Crusher Memes.

‘Oh my god!’ I laughed, ‘How much did you pay for this?’

‘It’s not that expensive,’ Victor said, ‘Two hundred reads a month. It’s really distracting sometimes, but it’s handy for promoting my fictions – people are always gonna click on a good meme.’

He scrolled up – most of the memes at the top of trending were text based. I looked closer, the swallowed as I realised they were about me.

I would put some of them in here, but I don’t have access to Crusher Memes so you’ll have to go searching for yourself. They’re bad. Trust me. Real bad.

Victor scrolled through them laughing and upvoting them while I slunk back in my chair, face slowly going red. I felt ashamed. The whole world was talking about me. About how much I sucked.

Eventually, Victor wiped a tear from his eye, he gave another chuckle, ‘Phew... I needed that.’

He stared at me, an odd expression on his face, ‘You okay?’

I just shook my head, I was biting my gum.

Then Victor groaned and awkwardly put a hand on my shoulder, ‘Look, don’t worry about it.’

I gestured to the screen, ‘This is literally the only reason I exist right now Victor – I have no purpose other than to write books, and I’m trash at it. I haven’t been able to shit out a chapter in a week. I’m constipated man. Just like the memes say.’

Victor ran a hand through his hair, ‘Look if I knew you were gonna get all upset I wouldn’t have shown you.’

‘I’m a fraud Victor.’

He sighed, ‘I’m not a therapist man. Look, I don’t even like you. But one thing that helps me is having a goal, you know just doing 100, or maybe 500 words before breakfast. They don’t even have to be good words. You can fix that up later – the main thing is that you’ve written them.’

I nod, ‘I tried that.’

‘Well maybe you just don’t have the right goal.’ He clicked at his mouse, went back to the Crusher Books homepage, ‘Tell me a story you look up to.’

I shrugged, ‘I’ve hardly had the time... oh wait, there’s the one with the chicken.’

‘This one?’ Victor said, squeezing his forehead.

‘Yeah.’

‘Well I was going to say you should pick a book and try to catch up to it – you know try to produce a few more chapters than them each week, try get a few more reads – humans thrive off a bit of competition.’ He gestured to the book with the chicken on the cover, ‘This... maybe not so much, this book is leagues above anything you’ll ever be able to write. It’s the undisputed champion of this website.’

‘Maybe it’d make a good target then,’ I said.

‘It’d make a dumb target – when setting goals it’s important to be realistic or you’ll just end up disappointed.’

‘Well maybe this isn’t a goal then, maybe it’s dream.’ I reached over and grabbed his mouse, ‘Just over 10 million views. Over 300,000 words.’ I shrugged, ‘It’s doable.’

‘Doable!’ Victor shouted, ‘Are you out of your mind! You’re gonna crash and burn.’

‘Good,’ I said, ‘I’d rater be on fire than feel like a wet rag like I do now. I think I’m gonna try take on the chicken book.’

Victor just groaned.

I took a good long breath. Pushed my shoulders back and chest out, I felt – almost good.

‘Thanks Victor.’ I said, ‘That was good.’

‘You’re an idiot.’ Victor replied.

I reached into the bag on his desk and grabbed a handful of chips. I smiled as he leapt for the bag and folded it up – then I walked back to my room with the beautiful taste of chicken and salt on my lips.

I sat down at my laptop, put another chip in my mouth, and like water flowing from a dam after rain the words started to spring from me once more.