How To Cope With Writer’s Block

It happens to everyone.  You just can’t get the words out.  You don’t know what you want to say, you can’t find a topic, and you just feel empty.

What to do?

One of the easiest cheats today is to go back to stuff you wrote on those now dead sites.   I am not talking about those which went down, (and you may not have a copy of the item) I’m talking about sites which have ceased paying but are still up or sites like Hubpages, were the dishonest Mod types ‘unfeature’ your work so it’s invisible.

Take an item you wrote some time ago.   Copy and paste it in an offline writing programme, then go over it, word by word.

Clearly your skill has improved since you originally wrote it, so you make all those corrections from sharper sentences, to more explicit adverbs or adjectives. You reword, you move your paragraphs, you make it a new item.

Frequently you will realise that you have two or three articles.  Many sites used to demand one thousand words or more and today the norm is around three to five hundred words.     Hence, you can break the item into various bits, and enlarge each one.

Often, while you are rewriting the item,  you’ll find ‘branch’ articles. By branch I mean where you notice a point you might have covered in a paragraph or a sentence in the original, and turn it into a complete article on its own.

Of course, the second you start the branch, your writer’s block is over.  You have defeated it by rewriting an item and improving it. Hopefully, seeing a point you had sloshed over which you develop into a brand new item breaks the blockage.

You may find a number of branches growing out of that old article.  Points or facts you didn’t explore.    References you made which can be further developed.

Meanwhile, before the branches begin to flower, you’ve gotten a couple of improved items you can publish, so that you don’t break your flow.