If you are afraid of writing--and many people are, especially when they first start out--these exercises may help to lessen anxiety. Samples in the first exercises are from students and workshop members.
1. Visualize and describe a private place where you feet safe to write. It may be anywhere--your real writing room, a spot outdoors, somewhere in another dimension. Visualize it in detail. Return to this place each time you begin to write.
Examples:
"My room is big and yellow. I am the only person who is allowed in here. I feel safe here since there are magic bars on the windows to keep out every English teacher I ever had. Nobody can see what I write or how I write in this room.
"-In the entryway into my writing room is a sort of machine that shines light on me as I enter. It isn't exactly light but a technology from another planet that looks like light to us but what is does is to double my intelligence and my concentration."

2. Imagine yourself as a kindly, compassionate editor or teacher and give yourself advice on writing.

3. Write as badly as you can. Use every awkward construction, vague reference, or unclear concept you wish. Pile it on. Go on to double negatives, dangling modifiers, split infinitives. Lay into verbs that don't agree, references that don't connect, and the passive voice without end. Write across the margins and upside down on the page. Write until you like the feel of the pen in your hand, until you are having fun. Repeat this exercise every time you sense you are not in control of your writing.

4. Visualize your fear of writing: a teacher with fangs, a professor with a whip, yourself with a copy of Henry James, etc. Give them names and ask them their, origins.Talk to these fears. Find out what they want.Visualize a large closet outside of your writing room and, as you enter, put your fears about writing in this closet.

5. Ask yourself: "Who is it that is afraid?" Then ask: "Who is writing?"

6. Try to locate the fear in your mind. Where does it come from, where does it dwell, where does it go when it leaves?

7. Remember a peaceful scene after you sit down at your desk. Visualize yourself as your favorite writer. Pick up your pen and begin.

8. Take 20 deep breaths before you start to write.

9. Meditate for a few minutes, following your breath. Keep doing so as you begin to write.

10. Place statues from your shrine on your desk. Contemplate them as you write.