Writers Block

I have read on various posts that writing content or a blog post seems to be quite difficult for some people and I am one of them, I have sat many times with a complete mental block as I stare at a blank piece of paper. Since joining WA I have realized that this is a skill that I must develop if we are to have any chance of success.

After much frustration and lots of doodling (I am pretty good at drawing pigs and houses!) don’t ask! But with trial and error, more of the latter I have come up with a method that sort of works for me.

So I thought I would share it with everyone! Who knows it might even be useful to someone out there.

First of all I make a short list of anything on my mind, once I start my list it’s amazing, subjects and different points seem to just pop up, I just get them all down leaving space to expand on them later.

My list for this blog was something like this: I Need to write more content ----write a blog---- my cars dirty--- Sonny (he is our pet cat who came to say hello)--- smoking--- articles--- dinner (I was getting hungry)---writing----money. I then look at each word or point and try to expand on what I want to say! And there it was my subject just jumped off the page: Write a blog about how hard it is to come up with subjects to write about.

I then expand on my subject until I have at least three or four points that I want to cover.

My start point is to write about my subject literately whatever comes into head. I don’t concern myself with grammar, spelling, punctuation or even if I am making that much sense. I just write until I have a few paragraphs on my subject. I have found once into my subject, I can easily write a couple of pages as I ramble on…. and on….and on…. Elaine has become very proficient at editing my rambles.

The skill I suppose comes later when I put my scrawling’s into some sort of order, but by then the hard work is done.

I don’t try to copy good writing skills as I have found I personally enjoy reading text that is written as it is spoken, if you know what I mean? I am not embarrassed with my efforts, after all if its total rubbish I will soon know by the response.

Practice makes perfect comes to mind, but I don’t think it will ever apply to my writing… lol!

I do hope this is useful for some of my fellow WA members who also suffer from writers block or lack of ideas at times.

The time spent writing this will be well worth it, if it opens a discussion and some of you more skilled writers could give us a few tips on this subject.

Bill rambling on… and on…. and on….zzzz