Have you ever felt writer’s block? Have you ever wondered why that is? Why can't you seem to find the inspiration, to come up with the next great idea, or write another piece? Have you ever wanted to write but you just can’t seem to get your head around anything? So, you have found yourself faced with the dreaded writer’s block—the inability to write or create content when it feels like you should be. The blank page is your new worst enemy as your inner critic takes over and the words don’t come out of your fingers. You may have already tried to take a break, clear your head, or get rid of that inner critic, and you may have even gotten a little bit of writing done at first.
All writers know this feeling is often temporary, and each time you do not give in to writer’s block it leads to developing a better way to work with it. Whether you are a blogger, copywriter, or just plain old struggling to complete that big project for work — at some point, you will face writer's block and find yourself typing random stuff just to get the creative process up and running again. This article will touch on three simple methods on how to overcome writer's block so that you can break through it and create again!
Read About the Subject
Reading will help keep your mind sharp and give you ideas to write about. It’s good to read all kinds of material, not just writing about your subject. You should read blogs from other sources. If you have a particular author you enjoy, check out their back-catalog for books or anything else they have written. If you discover something interesting, it can lead to even more detailed research into that topic and related subjects. That brings up another thing: try reading other people’s papers on the same topic. You might not agree with their conclusions, but it will help you start to come to your own conclusions right away. And once you start writing, you will be surprised by how much of what you were reading will start flowing out of your fingertips.
Clear Your Mind
Have you noticed that your writing is more difficult lately? Your mind freezes, and you sit staring at a blank screen, but the words refuse to come. You feel like there is so much information in your head that it’s impossible to write anything useful. Or maybe because our thoughts are over complicated and aren’t clear enough to create a compelling article out of it. But, it is natural for our minds to play tricks on us. We are human after all, right? When this happens, it can require you to take a break from writing and sometimes even from the computer for a couple of hours. This downtime will give you time to recharge your batteries and approach the writing with a fresh perspective.
Read Your Work Out Loud
When you are experiencing writer’s block, you have many options to solve it. You can take a break for a while or try to write something else to refresh your mind. Sometimes these work, but in the end you still don’t feel like writing. So, what do you do next? Read your work out loud. Most writers find this unappealing or just don’t think it will work. But in fact, that is not true! Reading our work out loud can offer advice from a completely different perspective. By reading our work out loud, we create opportunities for dialogue and hear where our writing lacks. It adds a completely new dimension to editing and refining your writing. Plus, it also helps you spot any spelling or grammatical mistakes.
Write Something Else
In an ideal world we would be able to sit and write without any distractions. In reality it is often a case of dashing off a sentence or two before something else distracts us. We have all been guilty of spending hours working on the same paragraph, only for our minds to go completely blank. It is frustrating, but writer's block is a fact of life and you can't let it get in the way of writing. So when you do feel like that try something new. Write a different character, write another quick scene or even change your location completely and write about somewhere completely different to what you are currently working on. And do not worry about breaking the story flow—your next draft will be stronger in the long run!
Writer’s block is nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a natural occurrence that will happen when you’re writing or creating; we will all hit a brick wall some time or another. But, if you know its tricks and how to deal with it, it won’t affect your work and you can carry on with your writing regardless of the challenges faced.