How many times have you sat at your computer to type a screenplay, a short story, an essay or blog post only to face the blank screen of despair? Your mind frantically claws at ideas while the cursor blinks at you, mocking your inadequacy. This has happened to me before and here is how I blast through it.

1 – Just Start Writing. Write whatever comes to mind, even if it’s nonsense. Sometimes, we have so much on our mind that our internal dialogue clogs the way for our creativity to flow. Get your head on paper, clear out the bottleneck, and then return to the topic you are writing about. For me, I find that it usually takes a page and a half of mental brain-dumping before I can start focusing on the topic I’m writing about.

2 – Write Poorly. Don’t get caught up in making your writing great. The pressure to write well is enough to prevent you from writing anything at all. Your first draft doesn’t have to be great. It doesn’t even have to be good. Go ahead and write. Make it terrible. Misspell words, make grammatical mistakes and just write awful. It’s kind of fun! Your next draft will only get better!

3 – Limit Distraction. Nothing derails concentration and creativity than a ringing phone, an instant message or feeling compelled to check your E-Mail. Turn your phone off, turn the TV off. Work on a computer without a network connection or disable your Wi-Fi. Set up a time limit – say 30 minutes – before you can check your Facebook again.

4 – Create an Outline. Write a general outline of your topic. Then go back through and flesh out each idea. Continue to flesh out the ideas until you have paragraphs written for each heading and subheading. You’ll find that your article will practically “write itself” as you work from the skeleton outward. I’m writing a whole eBook this way and after going through the outline 3-4 times and fleshing it out, it does feel like the entire book is writing itself. My thoughts and ideas are neatly organized.

5 – Keep a Journal. A great way to proactively counter writer’s block is to keep a journal. I like to write two to three pages of stream-of-consciousness in a notebook every morning. Preferably, I like to do this fist thing in the morning, as soon as I wake up. It clears my head and organizes my thoughts. I might remember dreams I had that night that will inspire creative ideas later in the day. You can also write three pages in a journal prior to starting a writing task.

I don’t believe in writers block. All I need to do is find a way to clear the path for creativity to flow through me and onto the page.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 9:40 am and is filed under Productivity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.