We’ve all had the experience of sitting down to
pen a new article, marketing e-mail, or blog post, and struggling to get the
words out. Even professional authors find that writing can be either simple and
straightforward or slow and cumbersome. The first sentence is often the
hardest.
A bout of writer’s block is frustrating
regardless of the circumstances. But it’s especially annoying when you’re at
work, time is of the essence, and you have a lot of other assignments to complete.
If you find that the writing process is
challenging or stalled completely, try the following tactics to get yourself
back on track.
Make a
list of essential items you plan to mention in the piece
This will help to guide and constrain your train
of thought. You can also use the items on the list as “seeds” for your
paragraphs—start from each individual point, then elaborate upon it in full
sentences.
Begin at
the end
In writing, as in many other endeavours, it
sometimes helps to reorient yourself, or approach the problem from a different
angle, when you find yourself stuck. To defeat what I call the first-sentence
blues, try starting your written composition at the end—with the last sentence
or paragraph. Rather than obsessing about how you want to lead off, think about
how you plan to wrap up.
Alternatively, you can simply pretend the first
sentence doesn’t exist, write the rest of the article without it, and then add
a “first” sentence once 99 percent of the task is already complete.
If time
permits, step away and engage yourself in something else
Your writer’s block may be partly attributable
to a mental block, which you can remedy by either stimulating your creativity
and problem-solving skills, working on a different task for a while, immersing
yourself in fresh air, and/or improving circulation of blood and oxygen to your
brain.
If you have time for a break, devote a few
minutes to a pleasurable activity—like reading, ping-pong, a full-body stretch,
or a walk around the neighbourhood. Ideas may occur to you more readily upon
your return.
Freewrite
Freewriting offers numerous advantages: it helps
you structure sentences and express yourself in imaginative ways, enables you
to purge distracting or tangential thoughts, and temporarily quiets your inner
critic. It can also help you develop a feel for and ease with writing, and
furnish ideas that can inspire future articles and posts.
Change
your environment
Creativity is among the most complex and
mysterious of all human attributes, and surroundings that are conducive to
exceptional creativity for some writers are like intellectual deserts for
others. For example, at a busy coffee shop, you may be stimulated by the
ambient noise, or distracted by conversations at neghbouring tables,
order-taking, and the grinding, whistling, and gurgling sounds continually
emitted by the machines.
Sometimes our subconscious is acutely aware of
barriers to creativity in a particular environment, even when our conscious
mind is not. If you find yourself unable to get writing done in one place, try
moving somewhere else.
If you
don’t need the internet right now, disconnect
The internet is the most powerful informational
resource that human beings have ever created, but also arguably the greatest
single purveyor of distractions—e-mails, social media, news headlines,
celebrity gossip, funny videos of animals doing zany things, to name just a
few. This is why Zadie Smith and many other wordsmiths advocate
writing on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.
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