Writing When You Are Not Inspired
Do you have to wait for inspiration to strike before you can write? If so, you are not producing as much content as you could.
Inspiration is fine, but it is highly overrated. When your business depends on creating content (as mine does) you learn ways to write without waiting for your muse to arrive. (My muse is highly unreliable and often seems to get stuck in traffic.) If you want to be successful as an author, blogger, or other type of content producer, you need to be able to write on command.
Here are some of the ways that have worked for me and others:
Schedule a time to write every day, and stick to it. Make an appointment with yourself to write for 30 to 60 minutes.
Better yet, instead of a time goal set a results goal. “I will write at least 500 words today,” is a good, achievable goal. Five hundred words is only about a page. You can do that, can’t you?
Set aside a day to write. I often find that I can get into a content “groove” and get lots of writing done. It’s the same thing athletes experience when they are “in the zone.” When I get started, suddenly, the words just flow and do not stop. When that happens to you, take advantage of it to create a supply of articles, blog posts, and other content you can draw on for days or weeks to come. Or knock out a chapter or two of your book.
Just start writing. Force yourself to keep writing, continuously, for five minutes. Staring at the blank page is the hardest part, so just start writing. If you don’t know what you want to say, just write, “I don’t know what to write,” over and over again but do not let your fingers stop. Eventually, you will get tired of that and will write something that makes sense. (I know this sounds ridiculous, but it really works.)
Write on the run. Keep a notebook, voice recorder, laptop or other writing tool with you at all times. When you are waiting for an appointment or otherwise have a few minutes to kill, spend the time writing. Get in the habit of texting bits and pieces of writing to yourself.
Keep an idea file. I set up documents in my word processor with titles, opening lines and other ideas for articles. I have one for my mystery shopper blog, and others for marketing articles, blog posts, etc. Your idea file can be a hanging file in your desk, a notebook, a bulletin board, or a voice recorder—however you are most comfortable capturing ideas. When I need to write, I turn to my idea file and choose an idea.
Do not edit as you write. Pour out the first draft without stopping to fix spelling and grammar issues, or worrying about the fact that you used the same word six times in the first paragraph. Just get it on the page. A long-ago co-worker used to refer to this, rather inelegantly, as “puking on paper.” Not a good image, but an accurate one. When you come to a stopping point, then go back and fix the problems.
Some of these ideas may not work for you, but others will. Try several of them, and see which ones make you a more prolific writer.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
