Ah, finally!  You have some time to write — an hour, half a day, a weekend, a week's vacation. Now you can silence that nagging voice in your head that keeps whispering "you should be writing …"

 So you sit down. You arrange your tools — paper, pens, laptop turned on, open MS Word document. 

Everything is blank. Everything stays blank, faithfully reflecting your mind, which is also — blank. You have nothing to say. What made you think you were a writer anyway? Writers write. But you are just staring at blankness. You are a starer.

There are many techniques that will break the dreaded writer's block. I have about a dozen favorites.  Here is one of them:

Write a simple story, one that everyone has. For instance, tell the story of your birth. Start with your mother and father, or even cosmic dust. Even if you are adopted, even if you've been told nothing, you have a story to tell about how you got here. What are the family myths that are told about your birth? Were you planned, or an accident? Was your mother's labor long and difficult, or did you slide right out? Who was with her? Did you have a pointy head, or a squashed face, or a skinny butt when you were born? Or were you perfectly beautiful? What did you wear home from the hospital? How were you introduced into your extended family — your grandparents, siblings, cousins, and what did they think of you? You're here now, and once you weren't — so something must have happened, right? Just tell the story. Make it up if you have to.

Well, now you've proved it — you can write! Now that you are finished staring at those blanks, go ahead and fill the rest of them in with whatever wants to come out.