Matt Tillotson
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Writer's block: Tips to break through

Writer's block is best described, scientifically, as:

A huge pain in the-you-know-what.

And I've got it right now. So, I figured, why not be completely lame and link to some of my favorite writer's block-busting tips? There are lots of bloggers out there, lots of writer's block and lots of tips to break through it.

Let's face it. I know I am not going to hit a home run with this post, so I might as well try to learn something and maybe help someone else out along the way.

First up: Copyblogger, with a sunny take on writer's block: Why Writer's Block is Your Secret Weapon. Author Melissa Karnaze says that writer's block is caused by fear, and the fear can be defeated:

Your clarity is directly linked to how convinced you are that you have something valuable to say — and that you can say it.

Both of these require courage to face the fear that any act of writing brings.

So use writer’s block as a signal to stop and reflect on what you fear and why, because if you don’t acknowledge the fear, you’ll never be able to face it. All it takes to move through fear is facing it, feeling it. Saying to yourself, “Okay, this is scary. But it still needs to be done.”

How to start unblocking yourself

If you need some concrete steps to get started on identifying the fears related to your writer’s block, try the “clean-slate” exercise:

  1. Take a blank sheet of paper and write down a one-line summary of what you think you’re supposed to be writing. Be as topic-specific and categorical as you can. Is it a book review, an online report, a sales page, a newsletter article?

  2. Write down all the ideas and opinions about that topic that have been passed along to you by other people — things that you’ve read, heard, overheard, or even imagined. Don’t forget your parents, mentors, friends, role models. Record all those voices running around in your head and lay them out on the page.

  3. Good. Now put that page aside because that’s not the one that’s going to turn your block into a weapon. (In fact, it’s the one that will keep you stuck.)

  4. Get another blank sheet of paper.

  5. Again, write down what you think you should be writing in the center of the page. Now, make sure you are alone in your room. There should be no one around to look over your shoulder, judge you, criticize you, or misunderstand you — in physical form or in your head. It’s important to maintain this solitude for the next step.

  6. Dig deep into what you have to say, what you think, and what your opinion is, stripped away from all of those from the first sheet. Put it all out on the page, and take more pages if you need to. Remember, there is no one to judge you and your task is to write without any reference to the ideas or opinions from that first sheet, but write only from within you.

Interesting way to frame writer's block: as fear. Fear of judgement.

Next up, Richie Lloyd has a system for spawning a bajillion blog topics. Here's just a snippet:

Step number one is to create a mind map of your blog.

Grab a blank piece of paper and in the centre write the main theme of your blog. What is your core subject? To keep it simple let’s say that your core subject is INTERNET MARKETING.

Next you should draw a number of spokes from your main topic. Don’t worry about how many you start with, you can always add more later. I would suggest six to ten as a start.

At the end of each spoke add a topic that is directly related to your main topic of “INTERNET MARKETING” and add sub topics to each of these individual topics

You can see where he's headed. Start with your core topic, then branch to sub-topics. Then branch off of sub-topics.

Still stuck? Here are some other links that can really help: