Beat Writer’s Block

No matter how much you enjoy writing, there’s bound to be a time when you struggle to write. When you have too much to do and a blank page stares back at you, how do you start to fill it?

Here are 10 tips and tricks to help you beat writer’s block

1. Change style. Trying something new will keep your skills fresh. If you write novels, consider writing for a magazine or newspaper. If you write horrors then try romance. You don’t have to show anybody these experiments and you may find that you have hidden talents that might provide an extra income.

2. Open a newspaper or magazine. Without reading the associated story, select a picture; use it to inspire a piece of writing.

3. If you’re writing for publication, the final outcome needs to be much different than if you’re writing for yourself. Stop worrying about readers, markets and publishers for a while; fill a page with something you want to write. A letter to a friend, a story for your children. Many writers keep blogs for this reason. Blogs act as a space to vent, work out issues, share thoughts and swap information.

4. Play the ‘what if’ game. Begin with one central “what if” and expand it. You can create complete stories using this method. What if your teenage son woke up to find he’d turned into a girl? What if you didn’t notice? What if he still went to school? What if he got into trouble?

5. Minimise background distractions. Aside from ringing phones and arguing kids, this can also mean the household jobs only you seem to notice. If you can, rope in family members to help with basic chores. (Surely Dad can cook dinner, or call the nearest takeaway once a week?) Getting these tasks done will stop you feeling guilty and allow you to focus.

6. Spend time rewriting your favourite fairytale. Choose a different point of view, or change the genre. This gives you the chance to let your playful side out, which is especially useful if you’re struggling with a demanding project.

7. Get away. Whilst a holiday isn’t always an option, a change of scenery can recharge your batteries. Take a journey to a gallery, library or a coffee shop. J K Rowling wrote the early Harry Potter books in a café. Provided you purchase something, most businesses don’t mind if you occupy a table and write for a while.

8. Close your eyes, open a dictionary at a random page and stab it with your finger. Look at the word you’ve chosen and its definition, then write. Try to incorporate the word and meaning into your work.

9. You set aside time in your diary for visits to the gym and shopping, so set aside time to write. Setting a definite time each week, when you’re ‘off limits,’ can provide a productive routine. It will also give friends and family a hint that writing is more than just a hobby.

10. Daydream. Whilst you finish off the housework or walk the dog, let your mind wander. Think about your project and answer any questions that arise. Even if you’re not the kind of writer who outlines everything in great detail, if you start with a fully fledged idea you’re more likely to reach the end.

For you to start your own blog, try finding the best blog hosts.

Writing Tips: How To Beat Writer’s Block is a post from: EzyBlogger Dot Com Follow Our Updates on Facebook and Twitter

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5. Claim Time to Write

Writing Your Way To Success As A Writer

The number one thing that will stop you from being a successful writer is not writing. In other words, if you never write, you will not become a writer. Although, just because you write something, anything at all, doesn’t guarantee your success, but it may get your ‘foot in the door’ at the editor’s office. Some days; however, it may only feel like a toenail.

A good tip to remember: do not forget to write your articles in paragraph form. This means to write four or five related sentences together that relate to what you are talking about. If you write in unstructured, chopped up sentences, you will definitely learn the definition of rewrite, because that is what you will spend the majority of your time doing.

Granted. There are other issues that will keep you from being successful. Editors can appear to be an obstacle in your path, but they are not trying to keep you from being a writer. On the contrary, more editors than not, are concerned with helping you become the best you can be.

Do not give up on your writing endeavors!

Submit and wait for feedback. If you get do feedback from an editor, embrace it! Take it to heart. Listen closely to their feedback. It is very important. They know what they want. They know what they are reading. They know how they want your copy to read. They know what their readers will think as they read your copy. (They are the experts and know if their readers will hit the delete button right away or not.) Listen to them! There are some editors that have been editing for over twenty-five years. They definitely know what appeals to them. They know their ‘audience’ and if you get feedback from them, try to adapt your writing to their critique.

There are online writing labs that you can use to perfect your writing techniques. Purdue has a wonderful online writing lab that you can use. If you do a Google search for Online Writing Labs, you will find quite a few that are available for your use.

Revise, revise and revise again!

True. There are people who write and write and write and never become successful as a writer. Then, there are others, who write and they make money with it. There is no personal guarantee in the writing field. Many have tried and failed. They give up. They quit. They end up writing nothing. The persistent ones are the ones who succeed.

Some people are good writers. Some are not good writers. This observation does not seem to be a large, contributing factor in determining whether you will be a success at writing, or not. You just need to begin.

If you are reading this, you already know that writing is not very hard to do, although, some days, a condition called writers block may affect you.

Writers block is temporary.

Getting over writers block involves changing your state of mind. It doesn’t have to be difficult.

There are some days that writing seems like a chore. You stare at a blank sheet of paper and it challenges you. “Write on me!” it seems to shout. Well. Fine! Write on it. Talk to the paper. Tell it what you are thinking. Imagine that piece of paper is your friend. Name it something fun, like Fred. It helps to imagine that the piece of paper has a personality of its own because it will be like writing to your friend.

Okay. Your piece of paper’s name is going to be Fred. Imagining that your paper has a personality will remove the pressure that results in writer’s block. Take a deep breath and let it out. Relax! Let your jaw drop open if you need to. You will be fine. Let the words flow onto the paper. The secret is to let all your ideas flow. You can edit later. Are you a good speller? Are you good at punctuation? It is very hard to read an article that has poor grammar and incorrect punctuation. It offends the flow. Fred will be very receptive. You will not have to worry about boring Fred. He is a good listener and his attention span is limitless. Fred will never find you boring or unoriginal.

Okay, ready? The best way to write is to write like you think. Forget all you have ever learned about composing stiff, boring sentences. People reading your writing will actually like a conversational style that involves reading your story and having it ‘speak’ to the reader as if the two of you are in a room, alone. Do not make it difficult for your reader to read your article. If you are creating more questions in your reader’s mind than answers, you need to rethink what you have written.

You do not have to write in first person to write well.

You can describe situations in full detail in an interesting way. Describe what you see. Does what you are writing about have any distinguishing characteristics? Practice makes perfect. Keep a journal of what happens around you. Write! Write! Write!

A fun exercise for you is to take a pen and notebook with you when you mow. It has been suggested, by a seasoned editor, that using a push lawnmower, being all sweaty and attempting to write on a piece of paper could be compared to a pilot riding a unicycle while conning his jet. Yes, even editors are prone to flashes of creative thought!

It has to be a lawnmower that you can ride on.

Think about it only long enough to laugh and loosen up. You will have to stop your mower when you write down your thoughts. You may have to stop several times. Park it and write. Do not attempt to write while the machine is moving.

The real point is that when you do a repetitive task, your brain will try to occupy itself with creative things. Have your pen and paper ready to jot down what you think about as you do whatever repetitive task you endeavor.

If you choose to mow, as you make the rounds about your yard, you write about how the grass flies out of the grass chute. Ask yourself questions about the grass. What color is it? Is it green? Is it wet? Use your senses. Ask your ears “what are you hearing?” Ask your nose “what are you smelling?”

Or, maybe, you could think about how some bug feels when it gets pelted with your fresh cut grass! Is it rearing up and preparing to scream some obscenity at you? Granted, most bugs are probably nice, but it is a funny thought that bears writing down.

Random, obscure thoughts are okay.

Write them down!

The point isn’t even that you need to be on a lawnmower specifically. You could do this in a car, on a bus, on a train, on an airplane or even on a boat. Embrace boredom! Embrace the mundane. Make fun of it! Make note of it and write it down. Good luck to you in becoming a successful writer!

How to Avoid Being Unsuccessful as a Writer is a post from: EzyBlogger Dot Com Follow Our Updates on Facebook and Twitter

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5. Claim Time to Write

Sometimes finding time to write can be difficult with everything else going on around you at home. There are endless distractions that compete for our attention and unfortunately they usually win.

We assume that things such as folding laundry and sweeping the kitchen are more important than our writing.

What we need to do is claim more time for our writing. Here’s how:

Skip a TV show

If you skip just one sixty minute show each evening, that’s sixty full minutes you could to be writing. If you don’t watch much TV as it is, skip a thirty minute show and write. When other people are watching shows that you aren’t interested in, don’t feel obligated to sit and watch too. It won’t be productive for you.

Carve out weekend hours

You don’t have to wake up super-early to be able to fit in writing time on the weekends. If it’s not a busy weekend there is no reason you can’t work during the day or evening for a while. Just decide on your hours and let your family know. If your children are older, chances are they are busy with their own stuff anyway. Working just two hours each day on the weekends adds up to four hours of writing time!

Write during homework time

While the kids are doing homework is the perfect time for you to sit down and write too. You’ll still be there to help them when they need it and make some progress on your own work. While you attempt to motivate your children to do their work, you can motivate yourself as well as being an example.

Ask for help

If you are finding it hard to make time to write because of all the things you need to do around the house, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Have other people cook dinner a couple of times a week and during that time you can squeeze in some writing. When you work from home it’s just assumed that you can do everything without any trouble. Let other people know that. Or show them by working and having them realize that you do more than take care of the house and writing is hard work. You working from home is not meant to be a convenience for others.

Get out

Just because you work from home doesn’t mean you are chained to your desk. Pack up your laptop and notebooks once a week and head out to the library or someplace else that you can accomplish your writing. Maybe you’d like to join a critique group or just meet with a group of other writers for the company and just write together.

Though it can take time to get the hang of writing from home, over time you will grow more confident and know what you need to do in order to accomplish your goals.

Be A Better Writer and Blogger

Claim Time to Write is a post from: EzyBlogger Dot Com Follow Our Updates on Facebook and Twitter

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5. How to Avoid Being Unsuccessful as a Writer

It happens to most serious writers at one time or another. You have plotted out the story line. You have developed most of your major characters and you may have even completed half of your novel. Then one day you open up your word processor, or note book, and you can’t, for the life of you, think what to write next.

Writer’s block descends like a paralysing fog that seizes up the brain and sends the new writer into panic mode. When it’s the first time it’s happened it really does seem like the end of a promising career. The flow of words that have been bubbling along like a fast-running stream have suddenly dried up and you are left staring at a blank page with no idea where your cherished writing is to go next.

It could be a short term problem that is easily fixed, a bit like a computer that refuses to work properly when you switch it on. The guru’s solution then is to switch it off, leave for a few minutes and restart. This usually works, and it’s a good idea to use the same technique with the brain. Get up from your screen, or put away your notepad and pen, and do something else for a short while. Make some coffee, go into the garden and de-head something…above all don’t sit staring at a blank screen or page. It will just make matters worse. While the coffee ‘percs’ let some ideas mull around in your head. If it’s a minor hitch, like how to start a new chapter, or even a new paragraph, just relaxing for a few moments will probably do the trick. You’ll be able to go back to your writing refreshed and ready to run again.

If it’s a major block (you’ve painted yourself into a corner with the plot, or you just can’t think of a convincing piece of dialogue that’s going to be vital to the ‘show not tell’ rule you’re trying so hard to stick to) it’s even more important to get as far away from your work as possible.

The golden rule is …don’t start to fret about it. It’s not the end of your career, it’s just a blip and you will recover from it. So try and distance yourself from this particular piece of writing. That doesn’t mean give up all together. Still try to write something every day. It’s like going to the gym, but involves a brain work-out rather than a session on the treadmill. Forget the novel for the time being and start a short story, or if you’ve never written poetry before, experiment with rhyming couplets…limerick writing can be fun and relaxing. It requires word skills and a sense of humour. Something you’re probably a bit short of under the circumstances.

Don’t become obsessive about writing though. Try not to let it be the first thing you think of in the morning. You could become depressed, and that won’t help anybody, least of all yourself. Did you have a hobby before the urge to write took over your life? If so, retrieve it from the cupboard, the shed, or the last known sighting of it and take it up again (temporarily of course, just until the ‘block’ has cleared).Whilst you’re concentrating on sticking the millionth matchstick onto that almost completed model of the Eiffel Tower the solution to the tricky problem of how to dispose of the body, or how your hero is going to escape from the locked room will probably come to you.

If you really can’t bear the thought of leaving your ‘baby’ all on it’s own try skipping the part of the story that’s giving you trouble and have a go at writing the last chapter or two. Yes, you may have the ending totally worked out, but you may also find yourself going off on a slightly different track, and this in itself could provide you with the necessary route to fixing the stalling point of your plot.

The brain is a complex organ and the answer you’ve anguished over for so long can have a strange habit of popping up when you least expect it. That’s when you need to be prepared. During this ‘fallow’ period of creativity keep writing materials everywhere. In the car, by the sink,and especially on your bedside table. Three o’clock in the morning, when you’re drifting between wakefulness and sleep, is a favourite time for a piece of scintillating dialogue to spring into your mind. It’s an absolute cracker…it will set the page on fire. You roll over and go back to sleep, and by the morning you can’t remember a word of it. Oh dear, oh dear! But think about it…you wouldn’t commit a length of prose to your word processor without saving it, would you? Unfortunately the human brain doesn’t come equipped with a ‘Save As’ facility so keep that pen and paper handy at all times. A lot of very successful writers advocate a ‘jot it down before you forget it’ policy for their writing at all times and it’s sound advice.

Lastly, try sharing your woes. You need a sympathetic shoulder right now. Don’t burden your family with it. Unless they are writers themselves they won’t understand why you are making such a big deal of not knowing how your protagonist is going to get out of the mess you’ve got him into, or how your heroine is going to respond to the good-looking guy you just wrote into her life. Close, but non-writing friends will profess an interest and then quickly become bored as you chew over every possibility. You will notice this when their eyes glaze over and they suggest a sudden trip to the shops or the pub.

Hopefully, in your personal phone book you will have the numbers of a few fellow writers you can call on in times of need. Writers groups are great for this, so make sure you’ve swapped numbers with some friendly members. If you’re a writer in isolation this can be more of a problem, so it’s a good idea to go online and check out some writer’s web sites. A quick engine search will bring up hundreds….some good, some not so, but there’s bound to be one or two that you like the look of. Register, and hey presto, you’re in a virtual writer’s circle. Post your problem on their forum…offer advice yourself if you’ve experienced something similar, and suddenly that feeling of being the only writer out there will evaporate. You’ll get a wealth of advice and feedback. And who knows? Someone’s suggestion may be just the help you need.

You may develop a few pen-friendships from these forums into the bargain . These are great too. You can email off all your troubles, and even if they haven’t a solution, at least you’ll feel better having unburdened yourself to a fellow sympathiser. It’s highly probable that he or she has suffered from writer’s block as well and just being told you are not a complete failure will do your morale no end of good.

Anyone author who says they have never suffered from an attack of creative meltdown is either a genius or a fibber, so don’t succumb to the notion that you haven’t got it in you to write that book. You have, and writer’s block is all part of the process of developing your skills and completing your work. And when you’ve finally written those magic words THE END the real work (of finding a publisher) will just be beginning. And when you acheive that you’ll need to start the whole darned process off again with your next novel!

Unblocking Writer’s Block is a post from: EzyBlogger Dot Com Follow Our Updates on Facebook and Twitter

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Anyone who produces written work, whether they are writing an article, a business proposal or an academic thesis, should bear in mind the importance of proofreading and more importantly, the dangers of not proofreading.

Proofreading is not solely the job of an editor as many might have you believe.

Proofreading your writing is a very important and integral part of the writing process but how should you go about it and what might you be looking for?

Here you’ll find five tips to help you get the most from the proofreading process and ensure the quality of your writing reflects the effort made.

1. Get a second opinion. Proofreading your own writing is fine, up to a point but independent feedback is valuable. You can be too close to your own writing and subject to spot the errors sometimes. Have someone you trust proofread your text. Many advisers say that you should get a friend or family member to do this. This is fine if you’re sure they will be able to spot errors. You need someone with an eye for detail and a sound knowledge of grammar and spelling. Encourage them to give you constructive criticism where they think they see errors, and not to just tell that something is wrong without offering an opinion or a reason why.

2. Never try to proofread your writing as soon as you’ve written it. Your mind is telling you what you think you wrote and not necessarily what actually made onto the page. Most editors will advise that you go and do something else for at least a few hours to ensure your attention has been diverted and you’ve had time to drop the train of thought that you had when you were writing. In truth, it’s far better to put the writing away until at least the next day, possibly even a few days if you have the luxury of time. This will guaranteed that you come back to it with a clear view or even just in a different mood. It’s much more likely that you will spot mistakes and areas for improvement.

3. Make sure you actually read the words on the page. Simple though it may sound, for many people this will be very difficult as their normal method of reading may be very fast, almost skimming the text. This is not a suitable reading style for proofreading unless you are very experienced. Thorough proofreading requires the editor to see, appreciate and digest every single word and its place in the sentence.

4. Never fully rely on spell checking applications and automated grammar checkers. They are no substitute for a thorough human proofread. Make sure you fully understand the limitations of spelling and grammar checkers and what they are actually checking for you.

5. Look for mistakes in context with the type of writing you’re undertaking. For example, grammatical mistakes associated with the way you speak or even a regional dialect may be fine and might even add to the texture of a character if included in dialogue. If, on the other hand, you’re writing a guide on the importance of perfect grammar, you will probably want to be much stricter with your language.

Image Credit – foxypar4

5 Tips to Help You Get the Most From Proofreading is a post from: EzyBlogger Dot Com Follow Our Updates on Facebook and Twitter

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Have you ever thought about a powerful way to use the Internet to make money ?

Since the Internet is a true marketplace for ideas, make money with random thoughts.

It might be through a blog, through selling your writing, through disseminating your advice on your web site, or through selling digital works such as graphics, cartoons, software, artwork, or other creative products in online marketplaces.

This brief blog entry explores the idea of synergy and specifically how random thoughts can make you money in ways that you never thought possible.

Merriam-Webster’s web site offers one definition of synergy as “combined action or operation.” In this discussion, synergy is being used in a different sense. The key to making money on the Internet is to express your creative ideas in a way that your buyers feel that you produced your works in some kind of mental synergy with them.

You have to harness the brain power that you haven’t even thought to tap into, in a way that everyday jobs often do not encourage you to do. Harness those random ideas and put them into a usable format that people want to buy.

Here is one example. On a whim, this author wrote an article about the importance of random thoughts. A short time later, the same article was purchased twice online. The experience illustrated that jotting down random ideas in a journal is essential because of the potential for using those ideas in the future. The journal is also a record of how your mind evolves.

The truth is that random thoughts do sell because they are not really random. What you think of as your random thoughts are just ways that your powerful human brain is expressing itself. Some of the best ideas are things that seem random until they are fit into the proper context.

Consider the case of Thomas Edison.

He took short naps here and there throughout the day, but he often woke up to jot down what he was thinking or dreaming in a journal.

Thomas Edison is a genius who did not live enough years into the twentieth century to see the true impact of his inventions on the world. Just think, if you could tap into even one-tenth of your brain power, what a difference you could make in the world.

You could profit in monetary and nonmonetary ways that you never imagined.

Along the way, it is fun to make money selling your ideas.

With the Internet as your marketplace, the sky really is the limit.

How to Make Money with Random Thoughts is a post from: EzyBlogger Dot Com Follow Our Updates on Facebook and Twitter

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