10 Tips to Overcome Writer’s Block

If you are a regular blogger (or trying to be), one of the problems you will face sooner or later is writer’s block. This used to be an age old term for people writing books or newspaper journalists, but now writers in the online world are often facing the doomed writer’s block.

The problem with most people is they will accept it and not do anything about it. Writer’s block is your mind playing tricks on you – don’t let it beat you.

I’ve come up with some tips to help you overcome writer’s block in the quest for new information and topics to write about. Some of the tips will be how you can find new information, other tips will be how you can clear your head and come back to work ‘fresh’.

1. Set up Google Alerts about your topic/ niche/ subject. Read what your competitors are saying. Is there anything good there worth recycling? If a new hot topic comes out, be one of the first to blog about it. Getting ahead of your competition is important, being one of the first to blog about a trending topic will cement you in the search engines for that particular long tail keyword search.

2. Search Twitter and other social media sites – again on your particular topic or subject. Sometimes getting informal views of a topic from people chatting can give you new ideas and opinions to write about.

3. Watch YouTube videos on what you write about. Sometimes you may feel like you are reading too much. A visual aid can help give you fresh ideas.

4. Exercise, have a break from the office and go for a run, yoga session or to the gym. A good workout will often clear your mind.

5. Take a long coffee break – your 8 hour working day sometimes may fly past, sometimes it may drag. On those days where you are not feeling productive, go down to the coffee store and take your time, chat to the barista/ other locals sitting around. Sometimes you need to take a break from business and just talk about life.

6. Take a Holiday – if you are one of those people chained to their desks, rarely takes a day off, and is always very prompt with work – you do need to take a break even if you don’t feel like you need one. Take a holiday for a couple days, or long weekend. Get out of the city and take some time to chill out and relax. There is no point having 60 days annual leave accrued if you are about to snap and throw your computer out the window.

7. Change your working environment – go to the local library for a change of scenery, or maybe sit in the park with your laptop/iPad and type out your emails.

8. Listen to music, this will make you feel good and when you are in a good mood you are more likely to be productive.

9. Eat Healthy – if you are sitting in your office with a big fatty burger, chips and doughnuts pigging out, this is not exactly ‘brain’ food. You will probably feel lethargic after a meal like that and that is kind of gross. Eat healthy, have a green tea, fruit, snack on some vegetables. Your body will thank you.

10. Whenever you have a good idea about writing, write it down – even if it is just a couple of words. Build up your list and you should get into a position where you always have something to write about.

I have some more tips for writers block, but I will save then for another post. If you have any good tips of your own – please do share them with us.