Writer’s block has affected all of us at one time or another but it needn’t get in the way of your success. Following these psychological and practical solutions from the Rintu Basu should help you get un-stuck in no time.

I think every writer at some time or another faces the inevitable sitting in front of a blank screen not knowing what to write. Before I started this new direction of adding writing to my career profile I was terrified that I would not know what to write and would very quickly run out of things to say. This fear was so deeply held that it was over six months after completion before I realised that I had written a book.

I will give you the process of accidentally writing a book (it took me less than ten weeks) in another series of articles but for the moment I will show you four habits, tools and exercises that have blown writer’s block out of the water for me and could easily do the same for you.

But first let’s put this into perspective. As I said initially I was worried about whether I would be able to write enough for 500 words a week for a blog. A year later I am writing on average 2,000 words a day for various projects without it making much impact on my day. I wrote a 20,000 word info product in a weekend and now my problem is not having enough time in the day to get all the things I would like to get written.

In this report I will give you four key elements that are calculated to blow out all forms of writer’s block. With a few days practicing and you will be easily putting down several thousand words a day without breaking a sweat.

1. Consistency

Anything you set up as a habit gets done. Take something as habitual as brushing your teeth. The chances are it would have to be a very unusual set of circumstances for you to forget to brush your teeth as part of your morning routine. By making writing part of your daily routine your unconscious mind will prepare you for it and long term you will miss it if it doesn’t happen.

Here is how I developed the writing habit. I just decided as part of my routine whenever I got into the office I would spend the first five minutes on my writing projects. I deliberately picked five minutes because I knew that however busy I was for the day I had could not have any excuse to miss five minutes writing. After a few days and as I was getting used to the five minutes writing segments I extended it to ten, then twenty minutes. Now I am so used to writing being part of my day that I am no longer as rigid.

2. Clear Goals

I have played around with a number of different types of goals about writing and have found two that work really well. The first I used to get huge amounts of writing done and the second to complete specific pieces of work. These I would call means and end goals respectively. Let’s deal with each separately.

A means goal would be something like I am going to spend the next five minutes writing. You will notice as a goal this is just describing an activity. This sort of goal for me is great for building up large amounts of writing for a piece of work. Typically I will say to myself something like I will write for five minutes on my book four times today, when I get in, before I go to lunch, as soon as I get back from lunch and again just before I go home. I am more likely to keep to this than one twenty minute chunk. And if I get some extra done on top of this then that is even better, but if not I still know I am progressing with my plan. There is another reason I plan for five minute chunks of writing but I will come back to that in a moment.

An end goal would be something like in the next half hour I will write a 700 word article on (x). This sort of goal is great for specific writing pieces that need to be completed.

The reason you are setting goals at all is so you can get a sense of moving forward, completion and reward at every stage of writing your book. Writing 40 000 words is a daunting task when you are starting out, but writing for five minutes is in the reach of everyone. 40 000 words is just a number of five minute writing sessions.

3. Mind Mapping

One of the biggest reasons for writer’s block is not knowing what to say next. Then the most obvious solution is to know what you are going to say before your finger hits the keyboard. If you get into the habit of planning out what you are going to say you can never be faced with the white screen of doom.

When you go through my info product creation videos you will find a specific process to planning and mind mapping that you can use for books, reports and articles. Certainly after a little practice you will get so good that you can see the mind map in your head and have no need to write it down before you start. But initially however short the piece I would suggest drawing the map before starting. This also has the advantage that you can walk away from it half way through and come back to it later.

I often have piles of scribbled mind maps that have come to me at odd moments of the day piled up on my desk. Each one of them I can turn into a report or article with minimum thought because all the thought that was needed went into it when I drew the mind map.

It is impossible to suffer from writer’s block if you know the order and sequence of each paragraph and the key points you have to get across in them. This is what a few moments mind mapping will give you.

4. Write Fast

When you write fast you are turning off your critical faculties. You stop trying to self edit and there is no room for self doubt. The other added advantage is you start to write closer to the way you speak i.e. naturally. It may sound counter intuitive but as a general rule your writing improves with speed. If you are not a fast typist think about using voice recognition software.

All the typical reasons why people get writer’s block are bypassed when you start to write fast. You don’t have the time to be self critical, search for big fancy words or be judgemental about your work as you are writing it.

Take on these four ideas and you will find you are churning out huge amounts of good quality material in minutes. For example this article took a total of seven minutes. Three minutes mind mapping and four minutes to write. I will spend another couple of minutes proofreading and deciding on a title. This article is a little over a thousand words. Now imagine what would happen to your writing projects if you did just 1000 words an hour (and I think you can comfortably do two to three times that) for a six hour day. It would only take you ten days to write a fairly sizable novel.