Survive Writer’s Block
An excerpt from Technical Blogging, Second Edition by Antonio Cangiano
From time to time you may find yourself in an annoying predicament. A new post is due on your blog, but you simply can’t seem to bring yourself to write it no matter how much you try. This phenomenon is commonly known as writer’s block, and it can be quite serious if your livelihood depends on your ability to produce new content.
I’m not a psychologist or a neurologist, so I won’t provide a lengthy explanation of what causes writer’s block or how to cure said ailment. Instead, I’ll share a few tips that work for me. I hope you’ll find them useful as well:
- Check your idea file to see if you can write about a different topic that’s less challenging or time-consuming than the one you’re having trouble with.
- If the writer’s block is there regardless of the post you’re attempting to write, consider changing your environment. Go to a local cafe, the library, a park, or somewhere else that’s different from where you normally hang out while writing your posts. The key part here is to introduce a change. Switch to writing with pen and paper if you have to.
- Consider taking a break and going offline entirely for a couple of hours. Go for a walk or to the gym; do anything aside from writing or web surfing. Chances are your brain’s background processes will continue to work on the post for you, giving you more insight and a fresher outlook when you decide to try writing again.
- Start writing without the intention of publishing your post. Simply write down whatever comes to mind. Nobody will ever see what you write, so you’re free to type away without too much concern regarding grammar, sentence structure, paragraph order, and other considerations that make for good writing. You’ll quickly realize that polishing these paragraphs and reorganizing them is easier than coming up with the perfect phrasing for each one from the get-go.
- Edit your posts in fullscreen mode to achieve maximum focus. WordPress and several editors offer this feature. The app Cold Turkey Writer will even block everything else on your computer until your writing (up to the specified amount of words) is done.
- If you don’t like the draft that came out of the stream-of-consciousness exercise above, try rewriting it from scratch now. Chances are that this time the words will come to you, since you’ve already mentally addressed some of the points you wanted to discuss. You can now formally articulate them.
- Write the h2 headings for your post and then see if you can write each section as if it were a mini-post.
- Lower your writing expectations and give yourself a break. What you write doesn’t have to be perfect. It can simply be a spontaneous thought, a reflection, or a quick consideration. You’ll be surprised at how often posts like this end up becoming extremely popular and well liked by your readers. Perfection is the enemy of the good enough.
- Don’t write your technical post down. Instead, talk about it with someone else, explaining the subject matter to them in a clear and interesting way. Doing so will help you organize your ideas and express the thoughts you’ve had tucked away in the back of your mind on a given topic. It doesn’t even have to be a person. It can be your cat or dog, though expect puzzled looks from them. If you have a rubber duck that you use for debugging,[63] the same technique can be applied to get unstuck from writer’s block and clarify your thoughts. As you approach the blinking cursor again, you’ll probably find it easier to formalize what you discussed verbally.
- Consider having a reserve of unpublished, evergreen posts (content that will still be current and useful in the foreseeable future). That way, if you can’t snap out of your writer’s block in time for a given week, you can tap into your reserve of prewritten posts to keep up with your usual blogging schedule.
Of course, you’re free to decide that you’ll simply publish when you feel you have something worth saying, without a set schedule. That’s definitely okay. The danger is ending up without having a new post go live for weeks or even months on end, which is particularly damaging in the beginning, when your blog isn’t established yet.
We hope you enjoyed this excerpt from Technical Blogging, Second Edition
by Antonio Cangiano. You can continue reading directly on Medium or purchase the audio book or ebook directly from The Pragmatic Bookshelf:
