She'd always been able to slip into characters heads with ease. Start writing in their voice, with their mannerisms. She'd find herself mimicking them as she typed, her voice lightening or deepening, her face scowling or smirking.

But this story was different. This story wasn't going to be about her characters in their own worlds. It was about her. And the one head she never practiced staying in was her own.

She stared at the blinking cursor at the beginning of a blank document, her fingers itching to start typing about Jal'i-lamon the elf and his aborted quest to save his kingdom and the princess he loved.

No, she reminded herself sharply. No fantasy. Real world. Write about yourself.

But she was a stupid topic of a story. Nothing interesting ever happened to her. Nothing dangerous, nothing unnatural, nothing even remotely story-worthy. She went off to her day job during the day. She stayed up late typing out stories of other characters in other worlds. End of story.

She started with 'I am a writer,' then erased it because that was an even worse way to start a story than a character describing himself in a mirror. She'd done that once, to her shame, in one of her earlier works. She could remember the description even now.

Nolar stared deep into the crimson eyes reflected back at him, wondering if the pain he saw etched around them had always been there, or if it was new this morning. The dark hair he usually combed so neatly lay disheveled above his creased forehead, and he couldn't bring himself to care. His attention wandered down the unbuttoned greatcoat, crumpled black pants, and heavy wool socks he wore. It wasn't just his face that showed his mood, he decided, but everything.

She'd thought it incredibly poignant at the time, but she'd only had a brief altercation with broody vampires, and Nolar's story sat unfinished.

No, no. Focus. Me. Write about me.

The cursor blinked. The page stayed blank.

She could think of any number of others to write about. Every one of her co-workers had a more interesting life. Even the other introverts had social engagements. Her closest thing to a social engagement was her next dental checkup.

She could write about that, she supposed. Maybe make it humorous. Exaggerate it to the point of absurdity.

But that wasn't the point. She wasn't supposed to write about a trip to the dentist, she was supposed to write about a writer.

'A writer's life is often imagined to be a fascinating thing, full of travel across the world and research in dusty libraries. In my case, it is neither of those. It is simply me, in my bedroom, with my computer. Day after day, week after week. The only travel I do is in my imagination. I've often thought I should go back to school, study history and psychology and geology and all the other things that could broaden my horizons, but it's expensive and requires effort which are not things I'm good at.'

She contemplated the paragraph a moment, then erased the part about going back to school. Well, there, she had a succinct summary of her life, which was supposed to be a novella. What more could she say?

'The only travel I do is in my imagination.' The cursor blinked at her. She'd been about to add something, but it vanished from her mind the moment she reread the previous line. Curses!

She'd recently begun to wonder if she had ADD, the way her mind skipped from thing to thing. She'd tried writing the scatterbrain trait into a few of her characters, but people always seemed to react as badly to them in fiction as her acquaintances did in real life.

She rearranged the sentence. 'The only travel I do is through imagination.' Then decided she didn't like it as much, and changed it back.

What was interesting about her? She was sure nothing about her experience was unique. Every writer probably had started with ambition bigger than their talent, planning a mega-saga before finishing their first short story.

She still had all the worldbuilding notes for Far Hana Darak, details about each kingdom, about their founding, their history, their culture. The shapeshifters of Vihon, the hawk-speakers of Arvel, the magical artifacts of Dibell, and the sleeping ancients beneath Tat-Chari. She still could call up the voice of Lijah and Rela, of Yana and Verhin, and all their various allies and enemies.

She knew she'd probably never finish it, even if she still played with its concept from time to time. The whole story was so naive, so childish. It had been her first serious attempt at writing as a thirteen year old and her childish ignorance shone clear even to the story's bones.

She noticed she'd started writing out 'Yana looked up at Lijah, realizing in that moment that the journey to save him hadn't been as important as the journey to find herself,' before shaking her head and cutting it to a scraps document.

Writer. She had to write about a writer.

But what was a writer, really, except an empty slate through which other worlds and characters manifested themselves? Was a writer really any different from a mystical seer, channeling power she understood not, to ends she couldn't see?

She couldn't guess moment to moment what words would come next. She couldn't plan in advance, because once she started thinking as a character instead of an architect puzzling out a stable structure, things changed. She could imagine thinking like a character, or she could be the character, and those two models gave back very different results.

'I love writing because of the freedom and power implicit in the artform. I can be anyone, anywhere. I can be a tortured prisoner one moment, a reigning queen the next. And most importantly, when I imagine a book which I want to read that doesn't exist I can simply write it myself.'

Was that too revealing? Too self-aggrandizing? She couldn't really write everything she wanted to read. There wasn't enough time in the day.

Frustrated, she selected the entire document and cut it to her scraps file, then stared at the blinking cursor.

'Dear Harold. I have decided that my life does not provide sufficient experience to write about the life of a writer. It is with the utmost regret that I must turn down the project, but I simply cannot get into a writer's head. Thank you for the offer, I really appreciate it, but I'm best suited to fantasy. I hope you can understand.'

She waited several minutes, hoping that inspiration might strike, that she might be able to finish the assignment after all, but instead she merely felt relief. She copied the section of text into an email, waited one last time, then sent it.

Elar Inkhand sat slumped at his desk, twiddling his pen between his hands, heedless of the inkspots that fell from its tip to the blank parchment beneath. He stared into the middle distance, contemplating the mysteries of the universe, and wondered if his vision of a far future were even close to the mark.

He glanced at the pages drying beside him, the hastily scrawled words he'd spent all night crafting. They fit with the visions he'd been having, the flashes of insight combined with unending confusion, but when he read back his work it seemed to be lacking something. Some intangible sense of completion.

He stared down at the blank page, the final page, trying to discern just what was lacking. He needed his main character to do something more active, more powerful, to finish out the climax. Sending a message by futuristic magic was not sufficient.

Or was it? Elar pulled the next-to-last sheet back in front of him and reread it one last time, nodding over the document, grumbling at the inkstains which obscured certain words, adjusting a misspelling here or there.

It would suffice, he decided, and was sufficiently fantastical that no one should be bored.

'Write about a writer trying to write about a writer.' One of the less ordinary commissions he'd received, but then his king was something closer to mad than most.

Yes, this would do just fine.

Assignment complete, he set aside his pen.