OVERCOMING WRITER’S BLOCK

 

We found an article last week about the craziness of writers.  But the more I read through the article, the more I thought…”yes, this writer is crazy.”

The fact that many of us are bloggers ( and there are those of you who do not realize you are bloggers) I found a few suggestions to overcome the dreaded–“Writer’s Block”.

 

From an article written by David Risley

Even with all the time I spend helping bloggers, there is one problem that has always stumped me: writer’s block.

I have the ability to pump out posts pretty quickly and it obviously comes in handy for me. However, many others that I work with get completely stumped when it comes to actually writing for their blog.

What do I write about? Will people care? Is it any good?

What happens is that you sit down to write a post and you spend more time in introspective thought than actually writing.

Another issue I see a lot is that some bloggers are writing, but from their audience’s standpoint. So, the entire time they’re writing, they’re constantly self-judging and nit-picking at the post from somebody else’s standpoint.

In other words, you’re doing everything except ACTUAL WRITING. The result is that you either don’t write at all, or it takes you FOREVER to produce a blog post.

Ironically, many times, the evidence of this is obvious to me. I’ll get LONG emails from people, yet they’ll tell me they have a hard time writing. :) Obviously not. I got this uber-long email to prove it. The problem is that they tense up when they know others will be reading it.

Successful bloggers write, they don’t think about writing.

At the core of the solution here, I believe you need to be yourself (not your reader) when you produce a blog post. This is a matter of mindset. You need to make the conscious decision NOT to self-judge.

Do what you’re doing while you’re doing it, in other words. Writing and editing are two different jobs and you cannot and should not be wearing both hats at the same time.

So, here’s a little trick you might want to try. It is a little crazy. :)

Turn off your monitor.

Have an idea, a thought, a concept that you want to communicate to your reader. Go to the screen where you will begin typing the post. Then, simply hit the power button on your monitor in order to turn it off. Then, just start typing blindly. Type as if you were talking out the concept to a friend sitting there in the room. Just type what you would say. Don’t worry about formatting, typos, grammar – anything.

When you’re done, turn the monitor back on. At this point, you’ll change hats. Stop being the writer and start being the editor. Fix typos, grammar and just generally ensure the post reads well.

If my description of writing above is pretty much you, you might want to give this little trick a try and see if it works for you.

http://www.davidrisley.com/writers-block/

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