Top Ten Tips on Getting Over Writer's Block
Motivating yourself to write constantly, no matter what it is that you write, is one of the hardest things to do. While most writers know that they have to sit down at some point and actually start putting together paragraphs, life has a way of making it extremely hard to do so. So, here are the top ten tips to keep yourself motivated and writing constantly.
1) Stay away from “soft” writing
Soft writing includes social networking statuses, forum threads and, that distracts you from actually writing. Focus on hitting a certain word count for your articles or stories. Don’t worry too much about how rough the actual writing is, because you can always come back and edit your work later.
2) Don’t end your sentences
When you sit down and write something, don’t end it with a period. Instead, when you know that you have to go and will have to pick up again later, stop in the middle of a sentence. This will let your mind think about different ways to develop the story from the point you left off at.
3) Enable idea generation
Carry a notebook around with you to write down ideas for articles or stories as they come to you. Sometimes, sitting in front of a computer won’t give you any ideas, and getting a good idea while doing something else will make you want to write even more.
4) Be disciplined about time
Set aside a certain amount of time each day that you must, at minimum, fill by writing something. It doesn’t have to be that large, maybe only 15 or 30 minutes, but make sure that you complete it each day. Doing so will get you used to writing constantly, and you’ll find that after a while that it will be strange not to write each day.
5) Limit potential for noise
Get rid of all surrounding noise, from dogs barking to music. Make sure that your work space for writing is completely quiet, and you’ll find it much easier to start writing.
6) Competition can help
Use “word wars,” or friendly writing competitions, where you compete with someone to try and get a higher word count in a certain amount of time, usually 15 minutes. This can make things a lot easier, as you are being forced to write against someone, and it provides great motivation and allows you to quickly formulate plot structure and characters.
7) Take a break
Sometimes, when you’re just overworked by you life, the best thing to do is to take a break. Take a nap, make some coffee, just do something to take your mind off writing. Sometimes, when you try to hard you can’t make anything happen.
8) Focus on goals
Set a long term goal, such as writing 20,000 words in three months. If you’re in the blogosphere, try measuring your goals in the terms of total posts, views or articles published. Either way, having a long term goal will help you strive to write more in order to accomplish it.
9) Create outlines
Make outlines of everything that you want to write. Article outlines can be created in a matter of minutes, and it can make things a lot of easier to write out, especially for longer pieces. Save all of you writing and outlines for later use to build on at a later time, or for when you want to edit your work even more.
10) Find inspiration through reading
Read other author’s works in order to gain inspiration and see how they create their articles or stories. Reading can also make you want to write your own stories and articles, and give you a fresh perspective on old ideas that you can reuse in new pieces.
Use these ten tips to motivate yourself to write constantly, and eventually you’ll see that you won’t need to use these tips to get started on your latest writing project anymore.
