On this first day of February, with a dusting of snow on the ground, I am reminded that this might be the month that you are stuck indoors and can spend some time writing by the fireplace while the wind howls outside.
If you have not written and submitted one article yet, go back and read through the posts I made in January to find out why it is important to write articles and some of the essentials of how to do it, then come back here to get started.
If you have started writing articles, you might run into what is know as "writer's block."
Writer's block hits almost all writers at some point in their career. You might have flown through the first five or ten or more articles then suddenly run out of things to say. If this has happened to you, follow these tips to get started again.
If you have been sitting at your computer, staring at a blank screen, pulling your hair out to get a new idea to write about, get up and move a little. The mere movement away from your computer to get some blood flowing will help to jumpstart your creative juices. If you haven't come up an idea for writing just by staring at the screen, continued staring will not change anything for you, except to give you a headache.
By reading today's headlines or your favorite blog, your mind will reconnect with words and ideas again. It might take just one sentence or one article for your mind to come up with a new idea. If you don't come up with any new ideas after the first headline or the first blog, try, try again. If still nothing comes to your mind, at least you have kept up with the news and seeds have been planted in your brain that might surface hours or days later.
Read through some of your own articles to find an article that was written from a broad angle and pick it apart to come up with more articles on narrower topics.
In a typical article, as you were taught in school, you probably made three points that supported your main point. You can write an article on one of these three points and support it with three more points that can be used in later articles, then these three points can be used in three more articles and so on. See where I'm going? Until you get down to the article that tells about the components of paint, you can keep writing articles just on sprucing up your walls with paint for days to come.
Start with just a list of words associated with your business or area of interest that you want to write about. If your website is about decorating on a budget, list the rooms in your house or the techniques, such as paint, wallpaper, stenciling, etc., that can be used to spruce up your walls. Start with just words then move up to phrases if those come to mind.
From this list you can choose one of the words or topics and write an article about that or you can choose one area, such as walls, and write a series of articles on the different ways to change the look of a room by changing the walls.
More ideas on writer's block will be presented in future posts. Choose one of these, take a break, read the headlines or a blog, read your previous articles, or make a list of words and expect that writer's block to be gone before you have to add another log to the fire.
If this article was helpful to you or you have another idea to share with others about breaking through writer's block, leave a comment below.
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Thursday, February 1, 2007
Article Writing - Break Through Writer's Block
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