Everyone who writes and/or blogs eventually experiences the dreaded “writer’s block”. That horrible moment when you out of ideas on what to write, or even worse, when you have ideas, but nothing seems to be good enough to put on paper (or your site).
- Maybe it’s hesitation.
- Maybe it’s lack of experience.
- Maybe it’s fear of what others reading your blog will say.
I have had it. You have had it. Everyone has had it and it will hit everyone even if you are an experienced writer. Fortunately, when you have the following tips at your disposal that I’ll talk about, you’ll be able to stop that problem very quickly and move forward with your writing/blogging.
Here are the 5 ways I’ll be talking about to stop writer’s block:
- Just forget about the block for awhile and come back to writing later.
- When stuck on writing, substitute the problem by writing on a personal story.
- Review products.
- Record your ideas, even when you’re not writing for future write ups.
- Read my blog post on what to blog about so you cure writer’s block.
All of these methods to stop writer’s block will be explained shortly with examples offered to help you.
My history with encountering writer’s block:
I’ve written an ebook before and I have also written tons of blogs. I find that the writer’s block has hit me more often when blogging than when I wrote that ebook. I guess it’s because when you blog, there’s a constant need for new ideas to emerge whereas with books, you already have a main idea in mind and need to reinforce that idea.
I personally have 3 different ways I deal with this problem. I’ve read articles where many more options were shown, but I think having a few good options at your disposal is better than many:
How to stop writer’s block. The 5 options explained:
1) Just forget about it for a little bit, then return back to it.
Unless you have some sort of major deadline due, this tip won’t help, but if you don’t, and nothing you seem to come up with is good enough, then maybe the best thing you can do is just forget it.
Sometimes the best ideas, including for writing come when we least expect them to.
What I find is that ignoring the problem and just doing other, preferably fun things usually helps the idea pop up when I’m in the middle of the other activity or when I do get back to work, all that unnecessary stress goes away and I have a much more open mind to come up with ideas.
Whatever you consider to be fun or even productive is something you should focus on when the writer’s block hits and you can’t get rid of it.
2) Write about any personal experience related to the topic of your blog.
Lately I’ve been writing a lot more case studies and in them sharing experiences I have with internet marketing. That’s my site’s topic and there’s SO many experience I can share. Why not do it?
Too often people worry that focusing on these types of subjects isn’t productive since sharing experience and gaining traffic from that aren’t usually intertwined. What I mean is that it can be hard to find keywords that get traffic and connect them to experiences you can share.
The fact is that it’s half true. In all my blog posts where I’ve shared experienced, around half the time, I was able to find a good keyword related to it.
Topics on things such as: Why websites don’t get traffic, why people fail at the business, examples of successful blog websites, success online business examples, topics on themes, plugins, common website and marketing problems, are ALL things I’ve been able to freely blog about AND connect with great keywords and the times I haven’t, I didn’t really care too much about it.
I’ve said many times before that you DON’T have to make certain all your blog posts chase some kind of keyword. In the end, it’s content that stands out and if you already have a great site getting traffic, you will have returning visitors who will be interested in more of what you have to say, therefore making those non-target keyword posts also desirable to them.
A lot of successful bloggers also collect email lists or start fan pages on social networks and with new content they write which often doesn’t chase keywords, they still get lots of visitors, shares and comments, all of which pushes the whole website authority higher.
3) Does your blog review and products? Yes? Good, you’ve just basically cured your writer’s block.
If not, stick to the above idea. In pretty much ANY blog that targets a niche market, there is never a shortage of products.
4) Record your ideas even when you’re not blogging. They’ll help you write for future posts:
If you have a day when you are cranking out ideas left and right, don’t waste it, write or type them up for the future if you ever hit a writer’s block. On those days, looking back at your list of ideas is going to keep you going further.
5) Do this and you’ll never have writer’s block issues:
The above tips I recommend above DO work, but I’ve got an article I wrote that has helped tons of people cure their writer’s block issues. Its called what to blog about to make money online. It will help you find topics over and over again to blog about and while that will supply you with ideas, if you still get those writer’s block issues, then use the above 4 options to stop that!
At it’s core, this is the cure to stopping writer’s block:
It’s about writing about something you are passionate about. If you have this, then you will be one of the few people in the writing world who will ever suffer from writer’s block and if you do, it will go away quickly, because your passion will breed new ideas and that will fix itself.
And that’s really a major reason for blogs and online business failing since the this industry started. Most people chase the money, not the passion and they will fail.
I can list more than a few niche topics I’ve created websites on that went under in less than a year because I just couldn’t connect with it. What I did do was lie to myself that it could work because the market was huge. Yeah a huge market has money, but lack of passion kills the fire to write about it.
And that’s when the writer’s block hits most often. And making things worse, a lot of people (me being one of them) instead of admitting they shouldn’t push forward and need to change direction still keep pushing that way because they believe something will change. Well unless you can force yourself to love something, I don’t think it will.
And all that energy you put into trying to get to that point is needlessly wasted most of the time. Why waste it all when you could work many times faster and more productively on a topic you actually like?
Now I am not talking about topics you like but have no experience in, I’m talking about topics you have no experience in, but really no desire to learn about other than to make money. If that’s your motive, stop right there and turn around!
My final thoughts:
No matter how many options you have, writer’s block WILL happen eventually. You just can’t expect to be an idea producing machine all the time. But when it does hit, it’s not that big of a deal.