The Perpetual Carrot: Leo's Frustration

The old coffee shop, "The Daily Grind," was a two-bit joint on Main Street in Cedar Falls. The air was thick with the ghost of a thousand cigarettes and the bitter promise of yesterday's brew.

Bob, a man with a face like a roadmap of every busted dream he'd ever seen, slid a cup of the black stuff across the chipped Formica. He didn't bother to look at the kid on the other side of the table, a nervous type named Leo, who was wearing a hole in his notebook with the tip of a pencil.

"Another loser, eh?" Bob's voice was a low growl, like a car that wouldn't turn over on a cold morning.

Leo stopped his frantic tapping. His eyes were glued to the pages, a thousand words of hope and heartache all neatly lined up. "Yeah. I had a feeling about this one. It had all the right moves. The dame with the dark past, the hero with a heart of gold, the twist that hits you like a cheap haymaker." He let out a sigh that was all static and no signal. "It just... didn't land." He shook his head, "I really needed the money to help with books. The new semester starts in two weeks."

Bob took a slow, deliberate sip. He knew the song and dance. The kid was a regular on this particular merry-go-round, always chasing the brass ring of the weekly writing contest in the papers.

"It's a rigged game, kid," Bob said, his gaze fixed on the swirling darkness in his cup. "A well-oiled machine, and you're just another cog."

"They're looking for the best stories," Leo insisted, his voice tight with a defiance that was as flimsy as a paper-thin alibi.

Bob let out a puff of air that was meant to be a laugh. It came out as a rusty cough. "That's the sales pitch. They get a few hundred marks every week, maybe more, all forking over an entry fee. All of them hoping for a crack at the prize." He let the word hang in the stale air, a cheap lure on a hook.

"It's a big prize!" Leo shot back. "And the exposure! A guy could make a name for himself with that kind of ink."

"And what's their take?" Bob asked, his tone as flat as a week-old beer.

Leo's brow furrowed. "They get good stories. They build a community of writers."

"They get the stories," Bob agreed, a grim smile on his face. "And they get the rights to those stories. What do you think they do with the all of the others, the ones that didn't make the cut? They use them. For their own shill. To promote their own rackets. To build their brand on the backs of suckers like you." He finally looked at Leo, his eyes like two pieces of chipped flint. "For a few bucks and a couple inches of column space, they own a whole library of original content. A constant parade of fresh meat, all working for free, all convinced they're the 'one in a million.'"

Leo looked away, his jaw working like a man chewing on a bad taste. "That's a cynical play, Bob. It's about passion. It's about the love of the game."

"Passion's the best con there is," Bob said, leaning in. The smell of his cheap pipe tobacco was a lot stronger up close. "It makes people do all sorts of crazy things. It'll make a guy spend hours, days, weeks, pouring his heart onto a page. And it'll make him hand it over for a small fee, all for the chance to see his name in print and a few paltry bucks. It's a hustle, kid. Pure and simple."

"It's not a hustle," Leo muttered.

"Do the numbers," Bob said, his voice taking on the patient rhythm of a blackjack dealer. "A couple hundred submissions a week. A dozen hours of work on each one. That's a pile of cash from the entry fees, and hours of free writing labor every week. All for one 'winner.' All for a prize that wouldn't cover your rent for a month."

Leo's pencil lay still on the notebook, the tip pointing at a blank spot like a compass that had lost its way.

Bob leaned in, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial murmur. "Let me ask you something, kid. Be straight with me. You ever read one of those 'winning' stories and think, 'the story I wrote, the one I saw that some other schlub wrote, was a hundred times better than this garbage'?"

Leo didn't answer right away. He ran a finger along one of the coffee rings, his expression as readable as a coded message. "Once or twice," he finally whispered.

"And did you ever notice a 'winner' who was a ghost before their big break? One who'd been on the sidlines for a couple years, never wrote a thing, and then suddenly, outta nowhere, 'wins' with his very first story? Or one with no history, no trail, just a brand new writer and a 'winning' ticket."

Leo's head snapped up. Elias had found the weak spot in the dam. "I... I don't know," he stammered. "I never paid that much attention."

"Maybe you should," Bob said, leaning back with a sigh of grim satisfaction. "You're so focused on being the guy who wins, you don't stop to look at the guys who are 'winning.' What about the rest of the suckers? The ones who didn't win? They get a form letter. A couple of canned lines about how tough the choice was. And then they're told to get back in line. The carrot's always dangling, Leo. Just far enough away that you can see the prize, but close enough that you think you might get to grab it next time."

"It's a way to get better," Leo said, his voice thin as a whisper of smoke. "To get feedback. To learn the ropes."

Bob let out another weary sigh. "They don't give you feedback, kid. They give you a list of things to read. To buy. To subscribe to. They sell you the cure to a disease they invented. They tell you if you just bought the right book, took the right course, you'd be a winner. And they're happy to sell you the snake oil."

"You make it sound like a crooked card game," Leo said, the words barely audible.

"I'm not saying it's a crooked card game," Bob said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "I'm just saying it's a hell of a business model. They found a way to put a price on hope. To turn a guy's dreams into a profit, one entry fee at a time."

Leo finally looked up, his eyes wide and a little wet. "So... you're saying I'm just spinning my wheels?"

"I'm saying you're giving away your soul," Bob corrected, his voice as gentle as a back-alley shiv. "And they're taking it. And they're not paying you what it's worth. They're paying you in the fake coin of false hope. A currency that costs them nothing to print, but costs you everything to buy."

Leo picked up his notebook and slowly, deliberately, closed it. The pages, so full of promise just moments ago, now felt as empty as a dry well.

"What do I do, then?" he asked, his voice cracking. "Just... stop writing?"

"No," Bob said, a flicker of something almost kind in his eyes. "You keep writing. But you keep it for yourself. You keep it for the people who will actually appreciate it. You don't hand it over to a machine that's designed to chew it up and spit out a check to some other sap."

Leo sighed, "You may be right. It does seem out of sorts. Maybe Mister Macintosh, down at The Written Word, can look into things. He has a knack for finding the truth."

"That's the first sensible thing you've said, kid." took another sip of his coffee, the old man and the young man sitting in a pool of silence, the air between them thick with the weight of the unspoken subject. The coffee shop still smelled of stale beans, and now, a new, bitter truth.