It can be daunting to sit down and stare at the blank digital state. Writer’s block and anxiety over getting started and what you then write are part and parcel of the game. Those feelings can be pesky, or even worse (a screenwriter I met years ago once tossed his word processor through a plate-glass window in frustration). But they can be transmuted into helpful tools.

As Zen yin/yang as it sounds, the best way to get writing is to have been writing. It’s truly a practice, and the more you do it and get worked in to the process, the easier it comes.

As said before, I advise — naturally — that writing professionally is one of the best ways to become a good and better writer, and overcome that challenge of sitting down and doing it. Nothing like having to pay the rent to get one doing it. (Alas, writing to make a living does get in the way of doing stuff you aren’t yet getting paid for….)

But writing isn’t something just done at the keyboard. I write in my head all the time before I actually do it, pondering themes, language, storyline, all of it.

A common pre-writing exercise with screenplays is to plot it out scene by scene on index cards. I do that in my imagination, and find a good time to do that as before I drift off to sleep. Just let it all unfold in your mind. (It also seems to help induce sleepfulness.)

There do seem to be two “golden times” for writing from my experience and those of many other writers I know. Alas, they are diametrically opposed: From 9/10-ish PM in the evening into the hours past midnight, and then from 6/7 AM though noon-ish or so. It’s hard to get both in a day. And over my years writing I’ve shifted from a late nighter to a morning man, and I believe in part as I’ve gotten past the writer’s block dilemma of getting started (which is one of them).

And in these days of digital writing machines and programs, really people, getting started shouldn’t be a problem. You can lay down what you have on the page and easily go back and rework it.

Or in other words, don’t be afraid to just write, It’s not when you give your internal editor and censor a full break, but they should be just observing from a back row, raising their hands to interject only when truly needed.

Yes, you have to be in the “write” mood and headspace. And writing rarely gets better than when you get drawn into the full writing mode and cool stuff just starts coming out, characters do unexpected stuff, ideas and the word flow in a way that seem like it’s at least in part coming from somewhere beyond you.

Sure, it can be intimidating to sit down and write something that could and should become a movie. But as a regular writer of prose, I look at this way: There’s way less words per page, and that has its appeal. And, yes, at the same time can be a huge challenge. Damn, it’s that yin/yang thing once again!