Typical Causes of Writer’s Block-
Most of us have great ideas trapped in our heads. Yet we want everything we write to have a “perfect” quality to it. In normal talking, we have built up the experience to talk through our fumbles and errors while trying to keep ourselves at least partially graceful.
Writing is different. When our thoughts are placed on a physical page before us, they seem concrete. We look at them and wonder if our words are wrong, we begin to question ourselves, and pretty soon every thought that is transcribed to the written word gets erased by our internal editor. Once that happens, it becomes harder and harder to defeat our own self-doubt and actually get something written. We suddenly realize that we don’t want to have our peers mock us for writing the wrong thing down.
Case in point- What if everything I wrote was wrong?
I would be fumbling around inside my head questioning everything. I would be flipping through manuals, asking questions of my ‘expert’ friends, and losing faith in myself.
Yet none of these things are happening- Why?
I know that I am human. I know that I am skilled. I know that eventually I will make a mistake, and I also know that I will have to take a step back and fix the error. Yet I do not focus on the errors. My message is more important. The experience, imagination, talent, and creativity I have to share outweighs the fact that I may forget to highlight a phrase or hit all twenty points floating around in my head.
Having personal feelings interrupt the writing process is absolutely natural and completely normal. Everyone of us has a slightly different challenge when writing. For every challenge there is a strong method of overcoming those challenges.
Here are some effective ideas for moving past writer’s block
Make Notes. When you are having problems forming new ideas to write about, keep a notebook handy. Jot down words, phrases, or complete ideas as you experience them throughout the day. At the end of the day, or even the end of the week, take a look at your notes and choose one to build upon. As busy networking professionals, I bet most of you already have a day planner with a calendar that has dozen of little notes that can be useful for jump-starting your writing ideas.
Brainstorming. Have you ever tried to list out your thoughts, trying to keep track of options or brain-storming sessions from an afternoon meeting? If so, take a look at http://www.mayomi.com/. It is a simple web based piece of software that is free to use and allows you to track and share your thought pattern. You may find that being able to graphically demonstrate your thoughts, the ability to save them, and to share them… in addition to helping expand your writing ideas, it is also a great tool!
Break out a dictionary. Think of a basic topic. It can be as basic as ‘real estate’. Randomly flip to pages in a dictionary and choose a word. Read what the description of the word is, then apply it to your topic. It may be a completely INSANE combination (Giraffe and Real Estate?), but the metaphors involved in your brain will begin to think Outside of the Box. Perhaps there something in your real estate area that includes sticking your neck out?
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