Overcome Writer’s Block with A Writing Process

Posted on November 2, 2007 - Filed Under Writing Tips

Writer’s block is a common malady that hits all of us, and it can frustrate or even “petrify” you - to borrow this term from Harry Potter. If you intend to start a blog or information-rich site, finding a way to overcome this condition is crucial to freeing you from the state of immobilisation.

Serious bloggers average between 5- 21 posts a week, perhaps more. You probably invest a few hours a day in front of your computer, writing. The time invested in creating content for your blog can take away time from marketing your blog, which defeats your purpose of having one, whether you intend to simply attract readers or earn income from it.

With a good writing process, you can reduce time spent in writing to half of what you are averaging on each article. The quality of your content will increase, and you free up more time to spend on marketing your blog. Having a good writing process like the one I am about to share with you, will help you organize your information, focus on key points and remove clutter, and allow you to actually enjoy being creative with your article.

Build a Mind Map of Ideas and Key points

Made popular by Tony Buzan, building mind maps is a way to engage our right and left brain lobes for whole brain thinking. When applied to writing, it allows us to put on paper our key thoughts and ideas around a central topic and organize them and relate them through “thought paths”, or links which interestingly is how the World Wide Web works. This allows you to structure your article into groups of information allowing you to view and plan your content in an organized manner. Benefits of doing this exercise is that it allows you to group relating facts that naturally evolve into paragraphs, avoid duplication, remove clutter and balance out your article.

Order Your Paragraphs
As each branch evolves into natural paragraphs, you simply need to order them to create the flow for your article, which depends on the angle or objective of your article. Refine your paragraphs by adding examples, anecdotes or metaphors to highlight important points.

Next, launch your word document and key in the outline for your article using the mind map you have created. Take the time to create catchy headlines for your paragraphs. I have created a format using the mind map example above following an order that I have assigned to each branch:

Opportunity for Self-Improvement
Unleashing Your Potential
The Power of Whole Brain Activation
- Stimulate Your Mind to
  - Accelerate Learning
  - Conceptualising Ideas
  - Improving Creativity
  - Creating Innovation
Setting Goals for Self-Improvement
Overcome Obstacles by Creative Problem Solving
Having Fun

Notice that I have grouped the key idea for “Stimulate” under “Activate, Whole Brain”. But that is the outline format that I would use and you could be grouping it differently according to your objective for the article.

Fleshing out Your Article
Now that you have your outline format, start writing to include the key points listed under each key thought. This is where most people will typically get stuck during writing if they have not planned their article, and common “ruts” that they have during writing are how to relate facts to each other, going back to rework previous paragraphs for better flow, or reorganizing their entire paragraph when they realise an angle or flow isn’t working out, all which could have been avoided if they had planned the article before sitting down and started typing.

When writing for a blog / website where you want your readers to be excited about your topic, product or services always use the active voice. Unless you are a company that provides research information or annual reports, the use of passive voice is generally not encouraged. As mentioned in a previous post, make use of the language tool in MS Word to check for spelling and grammar errors, number of passive sentences, and your readability index.

You might be thinking now that this process is too complicated, or takes too much time away from the actual writing. Some tips for you are that while most people spend only 20% of their time planning their article and 80% writing, top professional writers devotes 80% of their time planning their article instead, and only 20% writing. And the quality of their articles reflects that. If the concept of mind mapping is alien to you, you may spend about 30 minutes in your initial attempt at drawing one. With practice, you find that it becomes a breeze, and creating and tweaking a mind map will take up only 5-15 minutes of your time. Not a bad time investment for avoiding all the major writing pitfalls that stumbles most writers.

If you have tried this method and like it, tell me about it by adding a comment!

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Comments

1141 Responses to “Overcome Writer’s Block with A Writing Process”

JayB on November 8th, 2007 8:28 pm

This is wonderful! I always have trouble writing and this looks like a cure for my ailment! Thanks!

Ivy on November 9th, 2007 1:11 pm

JayB, I’m glad that you found the post helpful.

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