I really don't have an answer for what causes my writer's block but I am going to try a few little things to see if they help. After a quick brainstorming session on what my problem might be, here is what I am going to try:
- Schedule a block of 10 minutes when I am drinking my coffee in the morning for writing time. I figure if I get the writing out of the way, I won't think about it the rest of the day. Also, 10 minutes seems short so it won't feel like a drag when it comes up on the to-do list and I bet I can get a lot written in that much time.
- Quickly brainstorm some topics and write them down in a list that I can access on days I can't think of what to write about. I think I am losing too many little ideas that I could be writing about and not realizing it.
- Quit worrying about the content length. Some how I got it into my head recently that everything needs to be a page but that is excessive. A goal of two juicy paragraphs seems better than a long lean page.
- Change the title of the task in my to-do list from "write an article" to "write". I just need to get brief bits of news about the what we are working on or events coming up at The Peripheral Vision and our sister site, CMYK Press not write a piece for the Sunday edition of a newspaper.
We'll see how it goes. I already feel better just getting this written so maybe I am onto something. Sometimes you just need to hit the reset button in my brain.
If you have any tips on dealing with procrastination, disambiguation, or just getting things written? Let me know at dave@tpvhq.com, I'd love to hear about them.
- dave
