by Ginger Earle

Created on: October 07, 2009

Carving out time for writing is something all writers struggle with. Whether you have a day job or not, distractions, stress, writer's block, and everyday life often prevent us from sitting down and writing as much as we should.

Make writing time an integral part of your schedule. Every day you find time to brush your teeth and eat. You make time weekly for things like cleaning your house, spending time with friends, grocery shopping, and paying your bills. Screenwriting needs to become one of these things that you always do. If you are too drained at the end of a stressful workday to write, make writing something you do on the weekend. Instead of reading the paper and having coffee on Saturday morning, get up and sit down and write.

Writer's block, and the fear of the blank page is something that all writers face. If this is an issue for you, and it most likely is or you wouldn't need to force yourself to write, take the pressure off. For the first few weeks on your new project, don't limit your thoughts. Sit down and aim to write for a specified period of time, with no limitations on format. Just write. You may go off on some tangent that has nothing to do with your script. You may be more comfortable writing in prose form, or handwriting notes. Whatever gets you over your fear and gets you writing is okay. You can go back later and take these ideas and use them for your screenplay, or perhaps they will lead you to an idea for an entirely new story. Don't stifle your creativity, just force yourself to sit down and write for a specified number of hours per day or per week, whatever fits logically into your schedule and your writing style. If you make the goal too unmanageable for your life, you'll ignore it. If you parse it into easy to manage segments, you'll be less likely to ignore your writing time.

Once you've given yourself time to creatively explore your ideas and write freely, you can start developing a plan for your story. You will already be in the habit of writing regularly since you've taken away the fear of writing by opening your mind to other ways of writing. The next step is to narrow the focus and create an outline so that you have a path to follow. Writer's block doesn't always come from fear. Sometimes it comes from being overwhelmed with where to take a story, or unsure how to proceed from an idea. This is where an outline is invaluable and will help you stick to your goals and complete your screenplay. When you have the outline completed you can devote each daily or weekly writing session to completing a particular part of the outline. You won't get stuck because you'll have a clear plan in place, which will guide your writing and give you the tools you need to successfully complete your screenplay.

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