The best writers are collectors. They gather ideas and snippets of this and that as they go through their daily life. I always recommend that people who want to write keep a journal, and into this journal should not only go daily reflections but all of the things you have collected throughout your day.

Your collections can include ideas and bits of dialogue you've overheard, a nice description that popped into your head, a direction for the plot of your novel, and so on. They might also include photos, sketches, ephemera from daily life--anything that will jog your memory or create a spark of inspiration for you.

At first this may seem like overkill. But ideas need coddling and tending, and if you do that, they'll multiple in this magical way that I don't understand. Energy breeds energy and ideas breed more ideas. But, as you write more and more, all of these things will become more intuitive and you won't need to be quite so rabid about writing them down, because instead they'll go directly from your brain to whatever story or article or essay you are working on. When you are first getting started, however, it is best to write everything down. Many writers develop this habit early on and enjoy it so much they keep it up forever.

Collecting is the cure for the fear of the blank page. So many of us open a notebook or turn on the computer and then gasp in shock when we actually have to write something on said blank page. But if you've been collecting ideas, then you can turn to your journal, read that great description you jotted down, and use it as the basis of a scene.

Artists are great collectors. They gather and collect inspiration from nature, from museums, from urban scapes. They actively go out and look for pattern, for color, for design, and they note these ideas in their sketchbooks. This is exactly what we writers need to be doing, only we're looking for character, for dialogue, for location, for the telling detail.

So, go ahead, choose a spiral or a special journal and begin to fill it up. You'll never need to fear facing the blank page again.