Writers Block & How To Minimize The Effects
Writers block is something that we have probably all experienced at some point or other! Follow our 6 easy steps to beat the block.
Everything starts out fine, your head is full of great ideas to keep churning out articles for your blog & in so doing, keep drawing in an ever increasing number of visitors.
If your blog is fairly new, then you may not have reached this point yet, but believe me it will appear sooner or later & very often it will take you by surprise when you least expect it.
I found in my case, usually around the 5 month point is when I get the first signs of drying up!
Symptoms I Have Experienced:
1. My head becomes foggy (no it isn’t Alzheimer’s, although being a Taurus star sign, I suppose mad cow disease is a possibility..?)
2. Stupid spelling mistakes start appearing with increased regularity.
3. On occasion I will struggle to spell the simplest of words.
4. Ideas are no longer popping into my usually over active mind.
5. My ability to focus on a particular subject becomes quite difficult.
6. Irritability especially towards ones partner or kids, this is usually brought about because subconsciously you know there is a problem, yet consciously you are unable to deal with it!
What’s The Cause:
As far as I am concerned the number 1 cause of this nightmare is what I call “Burn Out”. You see whenever you carry out any physical exertion your body aches & this tells you it’s time for a break, but mental fatigue is a whole different ball game, we get so engrossed in our blogs that we can become oblivious to the tell tale symptoms.
From the time you start your blog, if you’re anything like me, you will be pushing constantly to try and improve it & at the same time continue to churn out interesting articles for your readers. This constant pressure can & will take its toll & if not guarded against can often be the reason for some top quality blogs falling by the way side. Once you notice the decline, then you start to lose interest & it all becomes a vicious circle that culminates in the demise of your blog!
6 Easy Steps To Beat Writers Block
- Keep a text document on your desktop called “Ideas”. Each time an idea springs to mind, do not rush off & write the article immediately, simple open this text document & on a new line write down either a title or subject. You will be surprised at how many ideas you will jot down over a 2 week period & this little text doc will become your reservoir of ideas.
- By all means write your articles at your own pace, if this means writing 2 or 3 articles per day, then so be it, whatever you are comfortable doing! But just because you write the articles it does not mean they have to be published immediately..? Always try and keep a couple of articles in reserve so that when you get writers block, you have 2 or 3 articles ready written which you will only need to change the date on prior to posting in your blog
- Remember the parable of the hare & the tortoise..? Yeah of course you do, well follow the example, never over exert or stretch yourself to the limit, you will simply burn yourself out very quickly! A steady plod will produce much better articles, with far fewer mistakes & this in turn will give your readers a much better experience.
- If you start to experience any of the above symptoms, then you need to take a break! Switch of the PC & walk away, staring at a blank screen is only going to make matters worse & will push your stress levels through the roof.
- If you are experiencing some symptoms then you really need to unwind, take a day off AWAY FROM THE PC. Maybe take the kids to the beach, go play some golf, take the wife / hubby out for a nice meal at your favourite restaurant, followed by a nice bottle of wine (big help).
- DO NOT under any circumstances try and force the issue, you are not a robot & your blog will ultimately be in far better condition if you learn to walk away.
By following these simple steps you can easily help reduce the stress that often occurs when you eventually experience writers block. I often take a day or two off from writing & I can assure you, there will be no noticeable change in your site ranking or the number of visitors that will hit your pages.
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A suggestion I read for writer’s block on another blog yesterday was to review your old archives. Reading through your old posts, you’ll likely come across topics that you now know more about and can elaborate on, etc. Writer’s block is a tough one to beat!
Yes agreed,
reading through your old posts can give you ideas, however I don’t feel this is such a good idea at the 5 month point, which is usually when I get writers block! The reason being, there are usually too few articles on the blog to start re-hashing what you have already written.
I find that a better solution for new blogs (under 1 year), is to go read other blogs along a similar theme to your own & whilst I do not advocate copying other peoples work, this method can very often give you fresh subject matter which you would then write in your own words!