Features and blogging

This was the title of a talk I gave about two years ago. So when I came down with a dose of writer’s block last month, I don’t know why I didn’t just go straight to my own notes and follow the advice. That’s the thing with WB, though: it creeps up on you and takes away all the sensible decisions.
WB happens for a number of reasons but my personal triggers are:
• No energy – being a writer all day means I sometimes get tired of my own words
• No confidence – a tough week at the cliff face can dent my own creativity
• No time – this is the biggest word-killer for all of us, even though our excuses are so plausible
• No creativity – sometimes I feel like I have nothing to say

Those sticking points have the following solutions:

BEAT FATIGUE
If you’re flagging, push the writing to the top of the schedule and grab half an hour of word-time when you’re most fresh. If you’re tired of writing rather than actually fatigued, change things up a bit: make notes on paper, not your computer. Take your laptop and switch rooms. Pretend to be a different writer and borrow ‘their’ voice. Start at the end and end at the beginning. Start in the middle. Just start.
BUILD CONFIDENCE
You can base it on a scary English teacher at school; an old boss who never bothered reading your reports; a big client who didn’t agree with you. Anyone can dent our confidence, but it’s the re-build that needs to be your focus. Make a cup of tea, then go and find your CV and read it back. That’s you, that is, and you’re doing this for a reason, and that reason is because you know your stuff. Now go and write about it.
MAKE TIME
I get it, I really do. No one has time these days, but we need to confront the clock head on. If you can steal as little as five minutes a day from your schedule and give it to your writing, that’s a great start. If you have to build it into your schedule, then do that. If you have to say no to watching your evening box-set episode, bribe yourself with a square of chocolate instead and have that as a little luxury while you write.
GET CREATIVE
Dive into a session of free-writing. Ditch the oxygen supply of structured thoughts and go tank-less, jumping into the deep end of that blank page and allowing ideas to float up like bubbles. See what I did there? Whatever the analogy, free-writing means spouting lines of random stuff for as long as you can. When you come up for air, you go through the phrases and pick out the ones that could work. You now have a starting point (and a sore keyboard, probably, but it can take it).

If you’re currently staring at a blinking cursor, rest assured you’re not alone, but you don’t have to stay stuck. And if you have any more suggestions then please share in the comments below: last month I could really have used some!