Dan stands at the front of the room with his hands open, not quite pleading. He's pitching the workshop again — the space where writers compete and build together, where arguments at 2am mean the work matters. The faces watching him look tired. Some look doubtful. This is the fourth meeting this month, and he can feel their resistance like weight in the air. The long table between them is covered in papers and laptops and grease-stained pizza boxes. Someone near the middle clears their throat. A woman with red glasses leans forward. "You talk a lot about earning the ending," she says. "About not skipping the work." She pauses, and Dan feels something shift in the room. "But didn't your story jump straight from the wound to the fix? Didn't audiences call you out for that exact gap?" The air goes still. Dan's hands drop to his sides. Every person at the table is watching him now, and he knows — right now, in this moment — that if he wants them to believe in the workshop, he has to stop running from the drawer he thinks about every single day. He walks to the corner where a model ship sits on a shelf. The sails are yellowed. The wood is carved with scenes he never finished. He lifts it and sets it on the table between them. "This was supposed to be a skybound adventure," he says. "The captain loses her crew in act one. In act three, she forgives herself and saves everyone." He taps the empty middle deck. "I never built the part where she earns it. I skipped straight to the ending because I was afraid the middle would break me." The woman with red glasses sits back. A man at the far end nods slowly. Dan keeps his hand on the ship. "That's why this workshop exists. So we can do the hard part together. So we stop each other from jumping the gap." The room is quiet, but it's a different quiet now. Someone pulls out a notebook. Another leans forward. The skepticism hasn't vanished, but something else has replaced it — recognition. The woman reaches into her bag and pulls out a book with gold filigree on the cover. Dan recognizes it immediately. His broken story, printed years ago before he knew better. She opens it to the middle section where three blank pages sit between chapters. "I bought this when it came out," she says. "I thought it was a printing error." She looks up at him. "But it wasn't, was it?" Dan shakes his head. The blank pages were his confession, the only honest thing he could do when he realized he'd jumped the gap. "No," he says. "It was exactly what I deserved." The woman closes the book gently and sets it next to the ship. "Then teach us how to fill the gap," she says. Around the table, heads nod. Someone asks about the first session. Dan feels the weight lift, just slightly, and begins to answer.