guide Content Writer's Block and Solutions

[Eric Lyon]

Whether we are writing for our own website development project, blog articles, press releases, or any other form of creative writing task, we sometimes find ourselves painted into a corner with writer's block. There are actually a few different types of writer's block that I'll brush up on below, keeping them separate for easier diagnosis and identification purposes.


Problem A: Blank Brain Writer's Block
This type of writer's block is when you just can't seem to visualize an idea, no matter how hard you try. A side effect of blank brain writer's block is starting a sentence and then erasing it or staring blankly at the screen whilst whispering to yourself in an attempt to somehow motivate yourself. You literally have no clue at all what to write about.

Solutions:

• Execution of an idea is the hardest part, so focus more on the fact that ideas are a dime a dozen and you can find some foundation in everyday life to get you kick started. Get out for an hour or two, breath some fresh air, relax, wander around town aimlessly and soak in your surroundings. Take a small writing pad and pen with you for notes. Maybe take some pictures, as well.
• Brain exercises tend to do wonders. Think of a part of your life where something groundbreaking happened and try to imagine that it went differently. Now put your fingers on the keyboard and let your imagination take over. Revisit a few different aspects of your past and repeat the imagination process. After a few times of doing this, it should get your brain in forward motion again, making it easier to write that original article that you wanted to in the first place.
  Bonus: You can still publish your imagination writings somewhere else. No need to waste any unique content.

Problem B: Brain Overload Writer's Block
I think we've all encountered this one more times than we can count. We get multiple ideas all at the same time and find it difficult to focus on just one. A constant mental battle back and forth with no apparent winner for a follow through.

Solution:

• First, go ahead and write each idea down on your note pad. Then, move the note pad aside now that you got them all out of your head. Don't worry, they are on the note pad now so you won't forget them later. Now, make sure you scrape your brain clean so you can start over from scratch with something fresh you can focus on by itself.
• Optionally, you could revisit the list now instead of later and do a process of elimination till you are down to just one idea to focus on.

Problem C: Scattered Brain Writer's Block
Okay, so you've got an outline for your article, you've got the statistics, resources, and other elements, but you keep drawing a blank when it comes to putting them all together and organizing them.

Solution:

• Many times this can be caused by being bored. It's times to spice things up and step off the beaten path of what's familiar or common to you. Get creative and add some flare to the article. Break up all the seriousness of it that's caused your eyes to become droopy and tickle a funny bone or two as you bring it all together. Just a touch of personal creativity can re-motivate you to complete your writing project.

Problem D: Brain Dead Writer's Block
This is when your paranoia takes over and gives your psyche a run for its money. You keep second guessing everything you do fearing that nobody will like what you wrote. Basically, you are shooting yourself in the foot and demotivating yourself for no reason at all. It's all in your head.

Solution:

• The ideas flowing out of your fingertips and translating into text are not anywhere close to being as bad as you think. Don't forget that you can always do a rewrite or make edits prior to publishing. Don't let an unfounded fear stop your chi. Remember, out of every ten people that like something, there will always be one or two that don't. Never let the minority vote affect the majority rule. You've got followers out there just waiting to read your next brain tingling scripture. Focus on providing it for the people that will love it and forget about what others think.

Problem E: Baffled Brain Writer's Block
So, you have finally gotten all of the elements in your article laid out in black and white and now it's time for revisions. While going back over your work, you're noticing a few holes in-between elements that aren't quite fitting the way you had imagined they would initially and it's frustrating you.

Solutions:

• Now, I'm just going to take a wild stab at this one, but I would imagine that this probably isn't writers block at all. Typically, it's more of a natural process that the brain goes through as it diagnoses an equation. Sometimes, patches of content-blocks are like puzzle pieces and they just need a few snippets of filler to bind them together. Take your time, breath, relax, and if needed, step away for thirty minutes to an hour and come back to it with a fresh and clear mind. Many times, the puzzle pieces will start to snap into place easily after that.
• If needed, don't be afraid to rewrite a content block to make it fit better. For some people, a rewrite with new words is easier than trying to unscramble the old ones.

And that's it. These techniques have helped me, and I hope they'll help you the next time you're in a bind with writer's block.

 

[Asfas1000]

I suffer from A, B, and C

 

[N-A]

If you suffer from A, B and C, this can easily be solved with mind mapping. The best solution; if you don't own a whiteboard, is to grab the largest piece of blank paper and visualize your writing instead of making a list.

Start with the broadest topic, for this example let's use "Domain Industry". From there, you can draw lines outward to more specific topics such:

• Drop catching
• Forums
• Market Places

Drawing a line from "Drop catching" can be something similar to:

• Services
• Times and dates
• cc/TLD

If a line is drawn out from "Services" it could be:

• NameJet
• Snapnames

Now, this doesn't give you the clearest picture of where you're going, or perhaps want to go. However, it may solve problem A. To solve your problem to B, clearly pick the direction you want to go from your outline by drawing dashed lines from Drop catching->Services->NameJet. You've now got a specific topic. Your topic will be drop catching services at NameJet.

This somewhat solves your problem with C as you have a visualized outline. An addition to this; if you're not an expert on their services, is to visit the NameJet website and get more creativity from their "About Us" or "Press Releases" page to spruce your article on NameJet up which covers E.

If nothing interesting was found to expand on your article, revisit your mind map and add in other topics relevant to NameJet in specific areas.

Nothing but you can overcome part D. The only way to do that is by pushing through A, B, C, E and seeing what you can improve on to attract a larger reader base with a couple dozen articles.

By that, ask yourself a few questions: What was your most enjoyable content? Was it engaging to the reader? Was it on a certain topic that people enjoyed more? It must be determined to put out "quality content" (though, it should already be quality writing by this point) that will have people coming back for more.

If you are suffering from completely from problem D, move on. You've got some ideas. Revisit it later. Pump out content. Skip to another topic to write about at that point and publish it. If you're unable to get over D on that, it's time for a break to clear your mind. When you return, you should have two topics that are fresh in your mind that can now be put to paper, giving you two complete pieces of work as opposed to one.

Remember to write, revise, proof, revise, proof, revise and proof. It's a constant battle revising and proofing, but the outcome will be a much better article.

I did proof this final draft, rather used inappropriate semicolons on purpose. For some reason, that has been, and most likely will always be a signature of my writing. Nevertheless, I try to improve on it and writing in general daily.

 

[alien51]

From my experience with Freelancers, i found that there are people who really have superior skills in stitching patches of ideas and info into one big article story. All they do is pull research materials from various sources, and spew out a really nice article. Some people are so good in doing it, you could have been convinced that they were talking from their own experience or maybe they are experts on the subject. But all they did was stitch infos together.

There are freelancers who are good in writing anything from Finance, astronomy, medicine, engineering... it's like they are jack-of-all-trades. Unbelievable. They don't own the ideas. They are simply very good in doing research, connecting all research material, and presenting them in a manner that would appear authoritative and convincing.

Some other people are full of ideas and great imagination, but unfortunately, they suck in writing and organizing their thoughts.

 

[N-A]

@alien51 , I've found a couple reliable companies that I use for article writing since there simply aren't enough hours in the day to write and maintain multiple mini-sites in addition to authoritative sites.

Regarding mini-site development, I typically pay around $5 for 500 words in lots of 50 articles on various subjects. Certainly they're great at researching and putting information together in an engaging manner as you stated. I've found exceptions to some with grammar mistakes occasionally which are quickly apparent having a quick read as I set strict delivery dates of 10-25 articles or reviews daily.

Though, I dug and saw that they're rewriting snippets from various articles online as I ran Copyscape on individual sentences; and even phrases, in an article to test them for originality. There was proof that even though they looked like they knew everything in almost any niche which I threw their way, they didn't. The companies were merely outlining with ideas on other sites. Nevertheless, they create a unique article come out both cohesive and coherent, which all writing ought to be. After I figured this out, I stopped utilizing them for authoritative sites and only for mini-site development. The content still ranks, so I’m not unhappy with the services for the price. Though, don’t want to risk possible duplicate content elsewhere.

You have to remember in writing, there are several people who you will need to address. Understanding the value of writing up, down, sideways and outward may be determining factors of a growing reader base or more sales. Thus, you need to know what's being written to an extent and to whom as well.

Writing Examples:

• Writing Up: This is writing to focus your energy on influential people already in that niche to make them want to give you a shout out.
• Writing Down: Writing at a beginner level on a topic.
• Writing Sideways: Making a write-up from your degree of knowledge and centering on what you consider a peer in your industry.
• Writing Outwards: This takes your direction and style of writing to a completely new stage as you're targeting about anyone. It is advisable to be careful with this as you can't predict who you're ultimately writing for. Use best judgment with writing outwards, whether for a post or a sales letter.

As you mentioned freelancers, you should take in account what level you'll run your sites at before providing them work to do. You'll get quality work delivered, though the articles may come back with a different audience than planned. This can be mistakenly as you aren't an expert and would fit in writing down, which may make your entire target audience novices. It isn't a good match to employ overall and effects many elements of your website from the number of visitors you get, to the time they stay.

Put simply, your writing has to coincide with what you know along with tailoring it to what audience it's aimed at before you publish it.

That's where your comment about good ideas not put to action comes into play. Writing is essential whether you're writing for your business or in general. The tips provided for mind mapping and solutions by @Eric_Lyon are fantastic resources to work with. It's essential to overcome your inabilities to write or else you should park all domains.

Writing won't only end with web development. It's very helpful when deciding on the proper words to market a domain, should there be a genuine buyer interested in it.

Spending $250 for 50 articles may be nothing in the niche you're in, but a good writer can make a typical mini-site more appealing to a wider audience. On top of that, other webmasters can spot what good content is and what they'd prefer not to link back to.

Having saved up to $250 daily for writing across 50-100 sites is great as you would only need to spend approximately 10 minutes of your time to publish a decent 250+ word article that people want to read. This cuts costs and enables you to have more creative freedom.

Though, you ask how you can write 50 articles a day. It's possible if this industry is your full time job, though highly unlikely should you be stuck on the problems Eric mentioned and can't find the perfect remedy.

Here is when freelancers come back in play. You can order an article from them, read it and then rewrite their work to be yours, outlining their points. Everyone has brain freezes and paying $5 to $25 to overcome that hump in a single day is worthwhile since you need to constantly deliver content.

I've been taking the path of rewriting rewritten content internally in most cases to cut costs and to give me an increased ROI on my $250 as I can incorporate a few things I know as well as suggested keywords which have medium competition and high CPC. It's rather hard to find a freelancer that knows which phrases to implement to be able to bring out the contextual ads. Adding your little touch to their work does the trick.

For more authoritative sites, I use one company and pay up to mid $$$ per article. Simply because I'll basically get a 2500 word research paper geared towards my market. I mention the word count as it essentially makes 4-5 pages. This is good to keep a user hooked on an article with pagination so they're more apt at taking an action at some point. The final products are honestly masterpieces to hang on your wall.

I don't manage too many websites that I would call authoritative, but I will only place this caliber of content on them. I won't work 8 to 12 hours straight on a 2500+ word essay if there's a better writer than me, who can get the audience spot on the first time and a revision back within hours if needed.