How to Eliminate a Miserable Time-Waster

If you've ever sat down to write an important email, your own marketing content or some other document that needs to persuade an audience, you know the time-waster I'm talking about.

It's that staring contest we have with the blank page when it's time to write. 

It's not just you. Writing is hard work, and anyone can get stuck.

Fortunately there's a variety of methods for getting unstuck. 

One way is to learn more about your subject. In fact, the most common cause of writer's block is lack of information. You may just need to do more research. This infographic  has some great tips on using Google to do that.

Here are a few other tricks I use:

Look Inward: Try Freewriting

Tracking down your best ideas isn't possible until you silence your internal editor. Freewriting is a method for quieting the grammar Nazis and spelling goons who always start shouting when it’s time to write. It helps you fish the useful thoughts out of your head and toss them onto the page.

Here's the method in two steps:

1. Set a question or goal for your freewriting session, for example, “Come up with a list of possible topics,” or “Narrow my topic into three key points,” or “What angle will be of most interest to my audience?”
2. Set a timer for ten minutes and using that question as a launch pad, record your thoughts. Don’t stop for ten minutes. Don’t correct typos or grammatical errors, and don’t worry about the quality of your thinking or making your text understandable. If your mind goes galloping down an apparently unrelated path, follow it for ten minutes and see what it produces.

There’s a whole book on this technique, Accidental Genius  by Mark Levy, that can help you refine your freewriting. Also used for private brainstorming, it can be applied to explore all kinds of problems – in business, strategy, even your personal life.

Look Outward:  Find Sources of Inspiration on the Internet

Keep a folder on your bookmarks bar where you store links to blogs and other websites that spark new ideas. Here are a few of my favorites.

List of Online Inspiration Sources - KunoCreative's Blog

Mashable

BBC's Future Desk

TED

Roy H. Williams’s Rabbit Hole

Michelle Rafter's Good Reads

Easier Topic Generation: Establish a Beat

Think about what your audience is interested in and establish a beat around those topics. In the same way journalists have a beat, a geography and/or subject area they cover, you want to invest some energy in following relevant events and stories on a daily basis. That way you’re ready with topic ideas when it’s time to face down the blank page.

B2B marketing guru Diana Huff explains how she developed her beat here.

When all else fails.... engage a writer! Call me if you need some help: 404-260-4514.