10 Easy Tips to Help You Stop Writer’s Block Forever

[In no particular order] 1. Pick a topic, Put a time on for 12.5 minutes or 750 seconds, and Start Writing Now!

Write whatever comes to your mind.Full-sentences–only if you’re lucky! Write bullets of examples, list of case studies, examples of people who do that topic well, bad or excellent. Share stories or a scenarios that you saw this topic in action. Explain the who, what, when, why, how and how much of your topic. Make a goal and set to finish it no matter what. Got a dry moment, sit at the tip of your chair like I am right now and start typing like crazy (spell check & editing later) Here’s an example: I just put mt timer on right now to type this out, and I’m a slow typer.

2. Keep a pen and pads around the house, your bedside and car for stay thoughts. Write thoughts down whenever they come up, and how often they may pop up in your head. These may be titles of articles, ideas for the case studies, a website to refer to as a resources, or other reference points.

3. Keep a tape recorder at your bed and cellphone with a recorder when you’re out of the house to dictate when you wake up in the middle of the night or while you’re traveling throughout the day. Can’t go to sleep? Tossing and turning thinking about whatever? Talk it out, or write it down. Since I hate putting the light back on, I prefer to talk straight into the recorder.

4. When you have a creative flow, type it out now. Then, keep to post for dry periods, or automate it with a future post date it.

5. Use any writing utensil you have and improvise. I’m a non-stop thinker. But, when I’m cooking or doing dishes I gain a ton of mental momentum. I have a pad in the kitchen, and blackboard, but because often my hands are a mess, I found that chalk is the best writing utensil, washable and all. I have the big sidewalk chalk size and regular size, depending if I have my rubber gloves on or not dictates the size I use. When my hands are clean and/or dry I transcribe it to my pad. Do not procrastinate with documenting your thoughts–it may never come back to you. At the beach? Write in the sand til you get your pen out of your purse…I have even taken pictures of my beach-sand notes before. Aww…I’ll find one to share with you soon…

6. Draw Images. Don’t look at a blank sheet of paper, draw pictures and visual thoughts. I’ve never like flow charts and bubble charts, but I’ve seen some major thought-leaders devise incredibe flows of completeness with this method. I like outlines, with letter, numbers, etc. Draw, connect dots, lines, vizualize your thought-process however it comes out.

7. Challenge yourself with Title. Sure Fire Titles from Brain’s Copyblogger can fit just about any topic. Now, I fit them for my articles, almost every post in the past 10-days. This one title came from another post Brian referred to once in one of his traffic building articles. Nontheless, it’s a Top 10 bulleted-list article. I’m now on #7. With the timer in the other room… I have no idea what time it is.

8. Do a quick search for inspiration. 1 sentence is plagiarism, 2-sentences is research.

9. Search images. Pictures say 1000 words, right? I looked for ‘contemplation’ and these are some of my stray thoughts: alone, time, solitude, deep thought, beauty in nature, refreshing breeze, contemplating in a relaxing method to ponder on life, deep within my soul…what I need to do, after I spell check this post.

10. Record a conversation. Headset-microphone from Radio Shack can attach to a tape recorder, ‘Whatdda ya think? I kept having that “We should’ve recorded that brainstorm”. So I started too. With my best-friend. I’m going to start with my 2 dear colleagues who I notoriously go head-in-head with bing-bang and our best work hitting and humming over dishes and getting our nails done. Do it on the phone.

Previously, and depending on situation, if its biz, we’re both taking notes, and compare later with email follow-ups. I usually take notes in personal phone calls too, since I know there’s always something I have to do, or they remind me of something…another blogpost, who knows. [I don't record those 'oh, I'm sorry...I was thinking of something totally separate from our deep conversation ]

So, there…I’m done with thoughts! No ding of my timer yet and I hashed out 10 easy tips, with the titles I had outlines. Ding!

[Now, I know why I had extra time: I wrote my first paragraph without a timer...I wasn't planning to cheat. But, now I have 17 minutes before midnight, as I need a post up before Monday is over, so I gotta get back to spell-checking and editing, word count? Don't know.].

This was a probably one of my best-well-thought out posts…and I did exactly what I set of to do using a combination of my methods above. Please share your tips, thoughts and curiosities below.

[Oh...poopie. It logged in as April 17th...what a bummer. Now, I need some empowerment, wanna share any!?]

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Posted on April 17th, 2007 by Ponn Sabra
Filed under: Entrepreneurialism