Have you ever been on a car trip to a destination that you were pretty sure you knew how to get to, but realized once you got going that you were horribly lost? You make turn after turn, each time thinking that you’ll get on the right path that time only to find out you’re still stuck. Writing for your blog can be like that at times. Even if you know the topic you want to write about and are deeply passionate about, sometimes you get stuck in the dreaded writer’s block. After a couple years of writing blog articles, I’ve found a couple of tricks that always seem to work well for me to get me out of my writer’s block ruts.
I think the most important thing to remember about writer’s block is that it doesn’t mean you are a bad writer or you have nothing of value to say. If you are hit with writer’s block, all it means is that you are a write. You know about the famous writer who never got writer’s block? Nope, you don’t. That’s because they never existed. Sometimes the best thing to do is to admit that this is simply not your day or time to write. Move on to another task and let your brain focus on that for a while and then come back to the writing later.
Another trick I’ve used many times is called free writing. I like doing this best with a pad of paper and a pen, and simply write whatever comes to mind. The goal here isn’t to write the blog, it’s simply to write and write and write. Sometimes you’ll start writing something that almost sounds like a diary entry and it will quickly move into something that reads like a novel to a delicious recipe and then back to a diary. What will happen when doing this is you will a lot of times eventually write a series of words that gives you that “aha!” moment. Once you have that “aha” moment you can go back to writing your blog again and see if words start flowing.
A few times I’ve had what I thought was a great idea for a blog article but have struggled to get it written. I’ll ask someone for their input on the particular article topic and see if they are interested in it and have a quick conversation with them about it. What a lot of times can happen with those conversations is that you’ll hear a phrase or sentence and have that “aha!” moment. Sometimes by doing this it can even take your blog in a totally different direction than you had originally intended, a lot of times it turns out even better.
Writer’s block happens to everyone that writes. A couple things I’ve found that have always helped me out are to simply admit that I’m stuck and move on to another task and write again later. If that doesn’t work free writing and have a quick discussion about the topic I want to write about have also worked great for me. There really is no silver bullet for getting over writer’s block, so if those don’t work and you still find yourself stuck, write a blog about your writer’s block.