Clara sat down opposite him, her expression softening. "Do you believe it matters, Elias?"
The coffee in the chipped mug had gone cold, a stagnant dark pool mirroring the dull grey of the morning sky outside. Elias sat at the small kitchen table, his fingers hovering over the keys of an old typewriter he’d found in a thrift store years ago. Beside him lay a scattered pile of papers—the first draft of a story he had been trying to write for what felt like a lifetime.
A soft knock at the door startled him. It was Clara, his neighbor, a woman who always seemed to have a kind word and a plate of warm cookies.
"Of course it is," Clara said with a small smile. "It's a first draft. It’s the skeleton, the bare bones. All that matters right now is that you’re getting it down, getting it out of your head. You can't fix a blank page, Elias. You can only fix what’s already there."
He looked at the papers again. "I want it to. But look at it. It's full of holes. The characters are flat. The dialogue is stiff."
"Still at it, Elias?" she asked, stepping into the room. She glanced at the mess of papers. "It looks like a battlefield in here."
For weeks, he’d wrestled with the words, crossing them out, tearing pages in half, and starting over. He wanted to capture something profound, something that would resonate with the world. But every time he read what he’d written, it felt hollow, like a ghost of the truth he was trying to tell.
