He didn’t really have anything in mind as he sat in front of that blank screen. That, he thought, was the constant problem of being paid to write, being asked to write on a regular basis.

So he sat, and stared at that great expanse of white, the pure absence of characters. And the more he stared at it, the more it stared back at him, as if to mock him.

He knew the deadline was approaching. No, that’s not the right word. The “deadline” was already passed. He’d gotten the usual “nastygram” email from the editor saying his column was due, and to please hurry up to get this month’s contribution in before the real deadline.

It was a game, always a game. The editor knew that the writer would never turn anything in on time, so artificial “deadlines” were set, as a kind of a wake-up call. And as every month before, he had hit that “snooze button”, knowing that this first “deadline” was just a nudge. But now, the real deadline was approaching. And he still had nothing.