It’s weird being here, writing my first post on this blog. Why, you may ask.
Well, after blogging for my own agency for a couple years, acting as a guest blogger on a number of other blogs, and ghost-writing blogs for a number of people, I’ve come full circle, and am back to writing one on my own. And today, of course, I have writer’s block.
So what to do about writer’s block? Here are a few things I do to clear the channels:
- Go do something else. Anything else, really. I generally default to something mechanical because it’s 180 degrees from the writing process. Frequently, while tinkering, I find an angle – something I hadn’t thought about prior, which I can use to spark my writing.
- Design exchange. Once, while designing a website, I found myself thoroughly unable to come up with anything that inspired me. I got on Twitter and asked for inspirational help. A designer hit me up, sent me a design file, and told me to make one change to it that I thought would be an improvement. I did. He made one and sent it back. We went through a half-dozen iterations, and it cleared my creative channels. You could do very much the same exercise with a single paragraph or blog post.
- Be prepared. Sometimes, no matter what you do, you’re not going to be able to write anything worth reading. When that happens, have backup. Unless I’m writing current event commentary, I’m generally writing a blog post that I plan to publish later, sometimes up to 6 weeks later.