You sit. You open the A4 refill pad you just bought especially from ‘notepads anonymous’, knowing you've got cupboards bursting with notepads of various sizes. You stare at the blank page. You look around at the people chatting away about grandsons, leggings, vim and pneumonia and you look back at the page. Stretch the arms behind the head. Shake the writing hand pretentiously as if you’re about to write Wales’ answer to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Nothing. You sit. You stare.

A word, just one word to begin, that’s all you want! Is it so much to ask in this day and age of reality TV that you, just you, could write something that others might find worthy enough to read. Or that you could write just for yourself, the tastes of others being a secondary concern at most? Nothing. You sit. You stare.

1^st person, 3^rd person, dark or humourous? Humourously dark or violently thrilling? Just that one word to get you going. Found it! The word is Kevin! No!...not Kevin! Who starts a story with the word Kevin?! I don’t know anyone called Kevin. I have known Kevin’s, even worked with one, but to call a Kevin a soul mate is beyond my present facebook status.

‘The rain hammered down as the detective looked through the dusty blinds at the neon signs below’. AAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!! what’s wrong with me?!

Maybe I should calm down, write Scurlock 10, promote my ‘Dawn of the Dave’ ebook at the Amazon Kindle store, post it to NTW, march out of the café with my pen held high and yell: ‘If I wasn’t so introverted, I’d be yelling right now!’, march out of the café and go into another café to get some unsatisfying food I can feel guilty about later.

‘Dean walked into a café with a notebook and pen. She was waiting under the clock...’ – I give up, I almost do.

Looking for inspiration today? Go out and do something, anything, that you hadn’t planned to do today, even if it’s going to a café. Listen to people. Learn from them. Find that opening line. It’s out there.