Writer’s Block: 9 Effective Ways to Beat It Easily
If you have been writing for some time, you probably experienced this from time to time.
It’s that feeling when your brain shuts down after a sentence or two and you find yourself sitting in front of a blank screen.
Not a word comes out.
Has this ever happened to you?
That my friend is a writer’s block.
The problem probably existed since the invention of writing, but the term writer’s block was first mentioned in 1940, by psychiatrist Edmund Bergler.
Bergler explored writers who experienced “neurotic inhibitions of productivity,” to try to understand why the problem occurs and what could be done about it. Luckily for us, since that time writers have come up with solutions to overcome writer’s block.
Here’s how to defeat it…
Change Your Routine
You might get stuck just because you’re always working in the same room, with the same writing tool.
The solution is pretty simple. Do something different.
Get out of your common writing office, get yourself a cup of coffee, and go to
the park. You probably have everything you need to write on your mobile phone. Or just change your usual writing tool. If you write in Google Docs switch to Word or write directly in WordPress.
Something even simpler than that is to just change the font or even the font size. The bottom line is, just do something different. It might seem stupid but it works.
Rewrite Something
This is a way to restart your creative process and get your brain in the working mood. Just take a
book from your favorite author or go to the blog you follow and start rewriting it by hand. You can rewrite anything you want, as long as it’s well-written.
You won’t use what you write here. You are just trying to restart your brain by thinking about content that is already written by someone else.
Write About the First Thing That Comes to Your Mind
Another easy way to get rid of writer’s block is to start writing about the first thing that comes to your mind. Even if it isn’t closely related to the topic you need to write about. No matter if you write your shopping list, something that troubles you, or something that makes you happy. As long as the words show up on your screen you’re good.
Once you go back to the article you need to write, it will probably go much smoother.
Go to Amazon Bookstore
Make yourself a cup of coffee or tea and relax. Find the bestsellers in your niche, and get your pen and paper. Just read the table of contents of each ebook to get some ideas and write them down. There's no need to read more than the table of contents.
Don’t stop until you have at least a dozen ideas for your new blog posts. Then, outline a couple of posts while finishing your coffee or tea.
Save the Introduction for the End
Did you know that introduction is the hardest part of your writing? The introduction should be used to tell the reader what the post is about. So if you haven’t written the rest of the content, and you don’t exactly know what will be inside then it’s not so hard to get stuck on the introduction.
Just skip the introduction and start writing the body of your blog post. Leaving the introduction for the end makes it much easier to write because you'll know exactly what you covered in the post.
Listen to a Podcast or Online Course
Writing podcasts are usually led by like-minded writers, copywriters, or bloggers who can give you some motivation and maybe some writing wisdom. They’re real people just like you, who have probably been in your situation.
What works for me is that I find some free online courses for writers or bloggers, go through interesting modules, and just think about what they are saying and brainstorm some ideas on how to implement it.
Practice Freewriting
Freewriting is a writing technique created by Peter Elbow in 1973. It's very much like brainstorming but instead of thinking, you're writing it down without stopping. Freewriting improves the progression of your ideas and lessens the chance that you’ll miss something good that comes to your mind.
Peter Elbow's original technique of freewriting is formulated to help you generate ideas and topics for your content.
Write for a few minutes, then choose one idea or word from that content, and then write about that new topic for several minutes, and then refine the topic by repeating the same process. This can be a help if you are starting from scratch and not sure what you want to write about.
Outline Content Before Writing
Outlining is practically organizing a skeleton of your content. You are breaking your headline into a couple of different elements, putting subtopics on paper, and then you create content around them.
This helps with writer's block because this way you'll know exactly what you need to write about. Therefore, the possibility of hitting writer's block is minimal.
Be Part of a Writing Membership
Most memberships provide an enormous amount of access to resource information such as case studies, articles, white papers, and books written by experts in your field or area of interest. There are memberships for nearly every profession or area of interest and many have national, state, and regional chapters available to join.
Joining a group allows you to have a sense of security and trust. From this, you can support and help one another in reaching your professional goals. And that will help to not hit that writer's block again.
Speak Instead of Writing
Speech-to-text software will help you overcome writer's block because you aren't writing. Your spoken words are transformed, on your phone or computer, to text as you speak. This way, you'll also be producing more content in much less time. And another big deal, at least for me, is that you won't be stuck at your desk. You can freely move around and maybe even do something else while you speak.
That's it. Now you know how to deal with this nasty ogre called writer's block.
And don't worry. Every writer gets writer's block now and then. But, don’t let it interrupt you.
Next time your brain shuts down, use these tips to restart it.
Now I want to hear from you. Have you ever experienced writer's block and what's your technique to overcome it?
