You owe it to yourself.

You have limited time, and everyone in your position has contemplated the same blank page and how to fill it.

Trust me, it’s easier than you realise. Everything we do is temporal: we live in the present, but are driven by the past and shaped by its experiences. So think back to first memories, which are the most uncomplicated, at least to begin with. Use them as a broad brush to paint a background onto which intricate stories will appear later.

Write about playing in the dirt; the taste of warm milk by the fireside; your mother’s kiss; your grandmother’s discarded glasses; the smell of your father’s pipe - you could recognise that smell today - and the chair where he sat when he was still alive. A door has been opened: more recollections will tumble forward. There’s your favourite doll, which you loved despite its imperfections – her nose twisted grotesquely after your little sister left it in front of the oven.

Your own dog. How proud you were of that dark collie who woke you each morning and followed you to school and hid under the bed with you during thunderstorms. And when he died – remember? – you swore you’d never have another. It hurt too much to let him go. 

Gather those memories like seeds, because they will sprout others, and your story will come, I promise.

Think about your friends at school. Let isolated memories surround you. Here’s one that floats above the others: the boy who chased you around your wooden-panelled classroom. You remember his name. Of course you do. In fact, you remember, in lapidary detail, almost all your classmates, and not just how they looked, but the sense you had when you were with them; the laughter tones of each.

But that boy in particular, it comes back again. How you let him catch you so you could feel his arms around you. You can still feel his hot breath, however brief. How you could gaze at him, seated in the row of desks in front of you, and memorise the curl of hair at the nape of his neck.

The sun is coming through the window. Let its warmth carry you to your last day of school, when life stretched beyond its natural horizons, when the air was drowsy, and in some field or other, the plough stole past your dreaming head.

That boy again. Now older and stretched into handsomeness. Still sending your heart into shards when he looked at you. Your coyness and his shyness doing battle. Think back to your birthday – your sixteenth it would have been – when your mother passed over an envelope and watched your eyes. How your breath stilled when you recognised his handwriting. Inside a card, hand-made. He had written ‘Thoughts of you’.

How fleeting. A week later you saw him again, but he was in a man's uniform, as smart as a pin, his chest puffed with pride. Your friend told you he was called up, or volunteered; you were never sure.

You thought he had forgotten you, but from somewhere in France –  the postmark wasn’t clear – came a picture of him in uniform. His proud gaze frozen perpetually, aimed not directly at you, but above and beyond the camera, towards a future he could not know. On the back he had written, ‘Fondest regards’. 

Was it only a month later when you picked up the local paper and saw on the front page that same picture, fringed in black, under a heading that read:  ‘LOST IN ACTION’?

When you write your story, you’ll find yourself unconsciously editing. There are grey areas in your life that you may skip over. All those wonderful books you read inspired your craft, but they are someone else’s story. Those diligent hours you spent at your work and your steady, independent progress are of no value now. You will not need to recall your worries, nor the opportunities you refused. These were lives you chose not to lead, and you preferred the endless promise of a photo you kept in a bedside cabinet.

But some black moments you must include. How else would anyone understand your mute sadness on the eve of your sister’s wedding, when you wept on your mother’s shoulder? Or how sometimes, though you cared deeply for your nephews, there were moments you could not bear to look at them?

Time is precious now, but accept that words will come to you more slowly and that your sentences will simplify by themselves. Your more recent memories are shallower and accelerate into each other.

As the deadline that faces every story teller comes into view, stay calm.

Your earlier memories remain solid, and they will somehow resolve themselves. Perhaps you wonder about your story’s meaning when taken as a whole, or its value, but these are immeasurable to anyone but you. You wonder too, naturally, how it will end, but I cannot promise anything. Endings, I’m afraid, are often messy.

But what I will say is this: you are free to close your eyes and dream. This is how the best stories are written.

So feel the sun on your skin and tell yourself what happens.

Do you see it? Your collie, after all those years, coming up that dust track towards you, the rays of the late summer sun catching his tail, fringing it with a halo. He has never forgotten you. Let him leap into your arms. Give him the hug you’ve longed to give him, for so long. His lurid pink tongue laps at your cheek and makes you turn your head. And your heart leaps, a single, giant beat: there, next to you, is that glorious boy in uniform, looking ahead at the sun going down. He is as young and as perfect as he was ever pictured, yet better, because now you can rest your head against his shoulder and feel his arm around your waist, at last.