Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Conquering Writer's Block


I’ve heard many people talk about writers block. I think the most likely cause is stress. Writer’s block is a little like what a speaker might experience if he goes to a meeting and someone asks him to get up and say a few words. I remember one of my high school English teachers talking about how to overcome writer’s block. The suggestions weren’t all that satisfying. The one I remember is to use brainstorming to come up with some ideas. We had brainstorming exercises we had to do. I hated that.


I think the best thing a person can do when she can’t come up with anything to write is to just relax. That’s hard to do when you have to have something written within the next day or hour or whatever, but all good ideas come from thinking about other things than our need to write something. Simply put, writer’s block occurs when the writer is trying too hard.