Some bloggers seem to have a never-ending stream of loquacious verbiage to spew forth. As for me, I’m not a writer at heart–I just try to be. There are tons of things to write about blog monetization, but sitting down this morning I still hit writer’s block. How did I deal with it?
Experience told me I could have done one of several things.
1) Surf and find. Of course, the most common blog post is a repost of an entry you find somewhere else. But aside from reposting, sometimes other blogs will give inspiration and lead you on a tangent to another topic.
2) Write a tutorial. Over time, as you become an experienced in your field, you learn how to do things better. It may seem like second nature to you now, but your knowledge can still be highly valuable to your readers, who may or may not be as advanced in skill as you. Tutorials tend to garner a lot of references in other blogs, too.
3) Take the lazy way out. Make a post about not having any ideas at the moment. I selected option #3.
One thing I find helpful is to keep an ‘idea pad’, and scribble them down whenever you think of them (if you’re too busy to post on them instantly). Keep this in your desk drawer, and if you ever hit a wall, boom! Instant posting fodder. At least, this is what I would do if I had a pad.
What are some of the ways you beat writer’s block?
4 thoughts on “Dealing with Writer’s Block”
Usually this hits me when I’ve been sitting and in front of the computer too much that day or even that week.
Your brain works better when you are moving around and the blood is circulating a bit. So take a walk, don’t pressure yourself to come up with an idea while walking but don’t loose the opportunity either. Take a cell phone or something capable of recording a voice note, worst case scenario, call your own voice mail, or take a pad of paper.
The break will help, so will the excercise and circulation. If you can’t walk try and find some way to get the blood flowing or at least get a change of scenery and background noise.
Alternatively, and I only recommend this about once every other year (every three if you work in an office or cubicle), take your computer keyboard (if you have a laptop and no detached keyboard this one will not work). If its not a wireless keyboard, snip the wire off. Then take your keyboard to the nearest half pipe and drop in on it a few times. If you don’t have a half pipe, you can just stand in your cubicle practicing kick flips with your keyboard.
This will definitely give you something to write about and it may even get you a couple days off, which will help even more.
I’ve always relied on Stumble Upon for my writer’s block.
I’ll stumble a few dozen sites in a niche or interest and eventually I’ll get some ideas on writing about a particular sports figure, some new science technology or something as simple as teaching a child to ride a bike.
thx Andy
A new semi automatic approach fitting nicely into this old thread is the online tool HitTail which also creates to-do lists.
Basically it collects search phrases from inbound search engine referrers and you can look at them and use the phrases as an inspiration to write an article.
HowTo: Use SE phrases for Copywriting Suggestions
The more statistical SEO vision of the tool is that you can see and choose SE phrases which are not so successful on your blog to achieve a wider audience by writing an article for the not so well ranked or used keywords.
Of course you can reach the same effect by meditating about your keyword stats in PMetrics 🙂
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