What did writers blame for their lack of production before that, hmm?

Writer's Block

Writer's block has been defined as the temporary loss of ability to continue writing, commonly due to a lack of inspiration or creativity. However, the concept of writer block has grown to include a number of ideas.

Included under "writer's block" are any delay in the "process" of writing, a lack of inspiration, and/or a lack of motivation. Since almost all writers go through stages and or encounters with these elements, it's been argued that all writers have suffered from writer's block.

Most writers who would describe themselves as blocked are working quite hard — reading, researching, writing plans and outlines, rewriting and editing… all the "right" things of writing. Their problem is that they are doing the right things at the wrong times or in the wrong amounts.

They have adopted a repetitive pattern of behavior that leads to being blocked and unproductive.

Writer block also has a peculiarity. It seldom applies to all writing.

A blocked writer can still write notes, letters, shopping lists or other types of writing different from where they are blocked. It also tends to occur at specific places in the writing process – someone may have written many pages of material and then get stuck moving to the next step in the process.

Contrary to common preconception, a certain personality type or disposition do not have any direct relationship to who gets blocked or how they get blocked.

The phrase "writer's block", offers insight as to how this is experienced. When describing their not being able to write, writers mention being immobilized, stranded, stuck, frozen, numb and paralyzed. The block is felt and that is certainly true for most who experience writer block. People describe it as a near physical block.

Writing requires both extensive visualization, thought and physical action (penmanship and typing) to transcribe the thought imagery into a book, story or argument. Writing is also best a multi-sensory activity. When viewed in that light, the descriptive physical activity language makes more sense.

What I find fascinating is that almost all authors struggle with the same doubts and yet so many can be productive in spite of those doubts. Doubts about their own worth, the value of their contribution, etc. But not comfortable, never comfortable – the cliche is that writing is one of the most uncomfortable, painful, gut wrenching things a person can do!

Yay! Are we masochists or what?

With blocks that happen at certain steps in the writing process, it's straight forward to understand how to bust the block. Change that pattern, and the block is gone.

If the writer is stuck in always having to take a break after writing a page and then just never gets back to writing again… the block-buster answer is clear. No breaks! If you write a paragraph and then have to research more, it's time to get clear on which you are doing. If it's writing time – then write. If it's researching time – then research! Not both.

If you must always research more in order to feel just a bit more comfortable with your output… the answer is in both lowering the standard of excellence required at the draft stage, and in using a research strategy that is fruitful and feels complete enough for what you are producing.

Recognizing and accurately setting a standard of excellence that matches your target audience is key! The standard of research needed for a book is different than the standard of research for a college paper.

Switching your writing process around and adjusting your standards of excellence based on what stage of the writing process you are in, are core steps to ending writer's block.

Also you may find that having access to brilliant imagery, that is unique, varied, useful and full of insight will both increase your output and increase the quality of that output.

Has there ever been a time when you were held back in your writing by how you felt? Your feelings have a great affect on your ability to write.

I remember numerous times in my life when I have "had to" write and been blocked from doing so because of how I felt. Many of those times it's been money worries that have gotten in the way.

When I went back to school at 39 with a wife and two young kids, I had a lot riding on both how I did in school and in getting money in. The main source of money for me at that time was freelance writing, and the stress of school and worries about money made it really hard to settle down and concentrate on writing.

To get myself going I used a little ritual that you might find of some use.

At night, when I sat down to write, and after a set of balance exercises to clear my mind, I would think about all the things that I had to be thankful for in my life. I'd sit in my chair with my eyes closed and go through a list of many things, for at least 10 minutes.

What I found that really made it effective was how real I made the exercise in terms of how I felt. If I just brushed over things in a detached manner, without amping up the emotion attached to the great things in my life that I had to be thanful for, well my emotional state didn't change much.

If I really paid attention and transported myself back to the event I was thankful for, or dug into the reasons why I was thankful for this or that person being in my life… my emotional state changed powerfully.

I discovered that what amped things up was a number of unique factors in my imagining. I noticed that if the memory was in color, that the feelings attached grew more intense. If the picture was in a particular area in front of me and a particular size, with amplification of the sounds associated with the memory, I'd experience feelings just as strong as the original event.

I concocted a set of imaginary dials to adjust things in both the pictires and the sounds. I could control my feelings just by manipulating the dials and changing aspects of my pictures and sounds.

Being in a state of thanks or gratitude makes writing simple for me. My experience is that, from that emotional state, my writing is better.

I recommend you try it out.

Have you ever heard of a talking, speaking, blathering block?

Seriously, other than stuttering and fear of public speaking, everyone can talk – endlessly and without trepidation.

Therefore, talking your writing is a foolproof way to end any writer's block. You simply talk about what you consciously already know and then let that prime the pump for more information to come bubbling up from your unconscious mind. It helps to get prepared.

First is having a base idea of the topic or hero/ villain/ setting. Then research on what you don't already know…

Or you love birds and you want to write a book on the care and feeding of canaries – what's out there? What is the competition and their websites? (more detail on the in depth research process I use)

After you've completed your research comes organization. You can quickly do this in your head.

I would recommend using ImageStreaming at this point to build the interconnections in your knowledge, so that you will easily create new, useful and exciting ideas.

Another cool tool is Photoreading. Reading at 20,000+ words a minute with good comprehension is a serious advantage. It works.

Then express it by talking out the structure of what you see yourself producing. Allow the expressing of what you know to generate more and more detail and fresh ideas. I've found that it does take regular practice to generate a useful organized structure to the meanderings of the mind. However, changing your modality of expression to talking can be a seriously helpful endeavor. It just ain't immediately easy!

As long as you are prepared for that effort it can pay huge dividends.

The reality is that written productivity — once you are prepared and have all the research and background — is quite slow. You can talk faster than you can write or type. Skilled practitioners of "talking to write" can generate 60 pages per hour of rough content!

Wow!

Producing a lot of ideas and then editing down to the gems is a genius thinking strategy that flat out works.

So talking to write has a serious advantage in that regard. You must use different parts of your brain to talk out loud as compared to writing and that means you begin to access new and different ideas. That is another advantage.

When you talk out loud and begin to up the pace of what you are saying, you can easily outrun your internal squelcher. This is another advantage of "speaking your writing".

Like all writing, the quality of the finished product is determined during the editing stage. I'd suggest that you do a quick and dirty first couple edits and then hand final editing off to others!

It's important for all writers to remember that more ideas expressed equals better opportunity to produce quality.

The deep, dark secret of "talent" is being able to produce a lot of ideas. Quality comes from pruning those expressed ideas down to genius.

What the heck am I supposed to do with all this content now that I've generated it?

Tools that can really help: CopyTalk -~$60/month – limited time; or FantasticTranscripts – $150/audio hour… etc.

For do it yourself transcription, use transcription software (Express Scribe, Transcriber) to make it easier to control the playback for your typing.

Start writing with what you already know you want to say. Get that down and then keep going until you are done.Write what you already know and let the rest follow along after…

Your unconscious mind will organize and create more as you go.

Have you gotten stuck on the perfect start or ending? Avoid it completely and just start on what you know – in the middle, on a scene, on what you already know.

Once you've built some momentum and a bigger view of the context of your creation, the rest will write itself.

Slam the easy stuff onto the page for as long as you can. This is called get on a roll and stay on a roll, as long as possible. What you focus on expands.

Move fast while you are writing and if certain areas need more development… and the next section is yipping to get out on paper, just note "ADD DETAILS" or "EDIT THIS LATER" and move on.

Let the clamoring stuff out onto paper, as fast as possible. You get more of what you concentrate on – when you let out the clamoring bits, the next bits start to trust that they can jump out on the page. They can express without being immediately edited to death!

Also, stop when you're on a high point. This will create a remembered state of being on a roll.

It's easier the next day to begin writing because you will remember how easy and how well it was going when you stopped.

It's like pushing away from the table when you're "just" full so you can more fully enjoy eating the next time because you're guilt free and your hunger is back!

This is training your unconscious mind to continue to bring valuable information to the front of your mind whenever you have the time to write – not at "inconvenient" times.

However, a really useful intention is to always be alert to notice and capture surprise inspirational flashes. Write them down as soon as you can after they happen! Have a notepad or voice recorder with you at all times, or use CopyTalk (www.copytalk.com) to record with your cell phone and have a transcription sent back to you.

You will solve all the hard bits once you have some momentum. Funny how it all seems easy… when you're done.

Then tackle the scary stuff!

What are you MOST afraid of tackling? Time to go big or go home! Spend an hour on exploring all the angles of the hard, most difficult bits. Use all the techniques above and hit it from many angles.

Kick the Stuffing out of it! This is a frontal assault technique – be sure to pick a time when your energy is high and your attitude is great.

Next, while listening to that, write notes on ideas that occur to you as you listen – pieces to add, directions to explore, additional insights or inspiration to explore. Set an intention to listen and not edit what's there, as well as to pause and write all ideas that occur to you while listening… again without editing!

Shifting the context/ modality from writing or typing will allow other insights to make themselves available to your conscious mind. Write quick notes and leave lots of space to explore the ideas that pop in.

If you begin to uncover some hot stuff, be ready and alert to push it a lot deeper. Pause the recording and follow any insights by writing them down, as fast as you can.

For more associations and deeper understanding, make a list of what you consider as the key points from the quick notes you make. Explore those subjects further – especially ImageStream on each to get richer insights.

Make More Mental Connections

As another catalyst, make a list of the letters of the alphabet. A,B,C,D,…Z

Then make a word or phrase reference that applies directly or that indirectly makes sense to you… to the subject you are expanding.

As an example, firm Tree Fruit varieties (…I was eating an apple)

A – Apple, Adam, etc.

B – Braeburn

C – Crisp

D – Delicious … … …

V – Vista Bella

W – Winesap

X – Excellent

Z – Spitzenburg

This A-Z list is intended to contain fresh, new ideas that you can relate back in some ( even tenuous) way to your original subject. This listing causes your mind to begin to create deep associations and connections to all the massive data that you have stored in your beyond-conscious mind. Constructive cheating is allowed here!

Fill in your list with all the things that pop into your own mind. Be surprised… it's okay to reach — if there is a connection that makes the slightest sense to you, that's fine!

Then relate the list to your subject. As an example: I'm writing about reading and commenting on your own writing as a way to enrich it.

Expanding connections from the firm Tree Fruit list:

A- Apple – firm and juicy has an initial taste and then a mouth feel, taste and smell, texture as you eat and then an acidic after taste… it keeps giving as does reading your writing and then commenting on it.

B- Braeburn – red and yellow mottled, firm and pungent… at the root of the fruit is the seed and there are many seeds around one core – the core of great writing is produce a lot and the various seeds are the many ways you can produce writing, speaking, notes fragments, freenoting, copy writing, editing, refining, all of it builds my writing breadth and depth quickly.

C- Crisp – firm, hard, cool, crunchy… switching between writing and reading/ speaking it out loud and then writing on insights switches between many parts of the brain. Ideas are competing to survive as they are subjected to more viewpoints and compared with other understandings and knowledge held in the unconscious mind. The firm ideas survive.

D- Delicious – "Delicious" picked off the tree is hard, cool and sweet — it changes taste with the land it's grown on and the climate where the tree is… after the fruit has aged it is softer, warmer, sweeter and more candylike… – reading my own words aloud refines my writing and noting while I listen gives me a stream of enriched and seasoned ideas to compare it all too, making it better and better – I focus on my ideas and they expand and refine and become distilled to the essence and become clearer. Etc.

If you cannot make an immediate connection and have to ask someone, or do a quick lookup to get hints and answers – that's okay. It all serves to refresh and build your understanding of the subject. Later, read the notes and start to expand on the new directions, and further enhancements.

Keep going with wherever that leads you!

The basics of writing are well understood and time tested.

Learn grammar until it's unconscious. Most of us have this down pat in our native language. Knowing all the "labels" might help in English courses, but if you can talk and be easily understood, you have the basics of grammar and communication. That's what you need to write and be understood!

When composing original new writing, write fast and without editing.

Edit your words ruthlessly until just the purified essence remains, clearly communicating what you want to say. Show me the pithy…

Modeling Excellent Writing

As accelerated learning pioneers and researchers have experimented and developed instilling excellence, modeling has become one of the most talked about and used techniques. There are many ways to "model" (copy in an accurate way) the behavior of someone you want to emulate. I'm going to describe the easiest one for writing and one of the most powerful writing skill improvement ways around…

A powerful way to model excellent writing is simple. You copy writing you admire, by hand.

The procedure is straight forward: Each day, for 10 minutes you hand copy your favorite author (…from the genre you are writing in). This is such a simple idea, that you might be tempted to skip it… However it is a proven Key step! Not only will it help to bust your writer's block, it will exponentially ramp up your writing ability and the quality of your writing.

Just for this purpose get a notebook, and everyday copy out — by hand — the writing of your favorite author for 10 minutes… or more. The intention you set as you start this has proven to be important… you are never plagiarizing; you are gleaning the style, the tempo, the written flow of a favorite author and intimately modeling it. This teaches your unconscious mind to integrate those elements into your own unique writing style.

Just write. Freely. For at least 10 minutes.

Whatever comes to mind, whatever's on your mind, whether you "are in the mood" or not, whether you're prepared or not; write.

Start every day's writing with freenoting. Just write whatever comes — without any editing — none! No stopping to add words, make sense, correct spelling, or add punctuation.

Write free of any need to edit and/or need to write to an audience.

Just like we rarely plan what words the next sentence we speak will contain, the best writing "writes itself". Ideally, writing and speaking are both mostly an unconscious process.

We've learned (or been trained) to multitask while writing. And this is the biggest block to unbridled, abundant and rampant creativity. We write, edit, rewrite and revise — all at once! Freenoting solves this!

The steady practice of this will begin to erode the tyranny of your internal editor. That editor continually makes you multitask by imposing the "write, revise and rewrite task" — all at once — a dictatorship on all your efforts.

This is a key step. One that is especially foreign to most struggling writers. This is born from training, or the need to be perfect, or the desire to produce something that other people "like".

It's meaningless what the reason is however, as the road to great writing starts with Step 1 – write! Step 2 – edit. "Ya canna do both at once!"

You get slow, even stuck when you try to edit and write at the same time. These are different actions, and they require different feedback and even different sections of your brain in order to function efficiently.

Freenoting may be focused or unfocused. There are no rules to follow. You may change direction or subjects at the direction and impulse of your unconscious mind.

Unfocused freenoting is a stream of consciousness expression of what's running through your mind at any given moment. Focused freenoting involves writing with an intent or goal, about a topic as a means of expressing what you already know about it.

There is no "correct" way to do this for every person, so try these actions…

Start with a blank document page and some countdown timing software (I use Tea Timer ) or the clock on the computer. If you prefer to handwrite, you can use a pad or notebook instead. Freenoting is all about generating words, not correcting spelling or getting the "right" word.

Set the time for ten or more minutes. It's important to note that longer times can be more productive since freenoting opens some powerful access points to your unconscious mind.

Begin to type or write about anything that appears in your mind's eye. And don't stop until the time is up. You might find it's easier if you just look at the keys while you type or do a "Stevie Wonder" and stare at the ceiling. Your outcome is to concentrate on the ideas rather than getting caught up in the editing, spelling and revising dance.

Then review what you have written at another time. Any ideas in there that might work for a project you are doing?

Focused freenoting follows the same process but begins with an intent, a topic…

At the top of a blank page, put the topic. Begin freenoting for the same 10 minutes or longer. Still follow the same procedure – write everything and anything that comes to mind, trusting that your unconscious mind will organize and bring useful written expression forward. No editing. Whatever order of ideas and digressions or grammatical and spelling creativity is fine. Write fast!

Look over what you have written at another time. Sift for ideas and phrases you can use.

There are four guidelines to Freenoting:

1. Write for 10 minutes (or more, especially if you fall into a flow state and are enjoying yourself.) The key to freenoting is to not judge any thoughts while writing them.

2. Write. Write as fast as you can. Don't stop writing until the time is up. Never stop or even slow down for the "right" word. Write what you get and if more occurs to you a sentence or two later, just write it down right there! If you run out of things to say, just keep writing the last word, or your name, or "Being stuck, leads to better and better ideas" over and over again. Intend that more words will come and they will.

3. Turn off the "squelcher", that editor who tells you to go back and move that "i" or cross that "t," tells you that this or that idea is not well formed, or tells you that you've just written a run-on sentence or fragment. Mentally see the squelcher button. Reach out and turn it off!

4. When the time is up, start writing on other things. Later go back over the text and begin to edit by pulling out the surprises: identify interesting passages, ideas and phrases. Or chuck it away!

Freenoting's value is in the doing of it, and it may just take a week or up to a month until you are producing things of value most of the time. This is a training exercise and it will take your unconscious mind a little while to catch up to what you are doing. It's called learning!

Always follow what's in your mind's eye; find out what you have to say by just expressing it (on paper). Feel free to change subjects or point of view.

Trust yourself, your unconscious mind and your writing.

Freenoting is a both a information organizer and a memory stimulator. Your unconscious mind is a huge storehouse of information and it is constantly reorganizing and reordering that knowledge to meet the latest goals and intents of your conscious self.

Freenoting, especially with practice, makes available what you already know about anything and allows you to make connections you might not otherwise make. It moves you past the obvious, instant, surface responses so that you can dig deep to the insightful and valuable ideas of what you really want to say.

When you freenote you don't worry about correct punctuation, grammar or spelling. The point of this exercise is production, getting what's in your unconscious out, and written.

It take some focused discipline to never re-read what you've written until after you've finished; the value is in getting your ideas spilling out of you at a breakneck pace. If you worry about if they're written down "right" then you are not letting them flow.

I'm not "dissing" the edit function. It is a very important step to produce powerful and useful writing. I am decrying the tyranny of it when you are in the throes of creation, however. You must write and create unfettered, unshackled, and totally free.

Words are inexhaustible. Your words are plentiful. There isn't a limit on what you will produce in this lifetime… really! So being careful to only produce great or the right words just limits your output and paradoxically, limits your quality.

Every brainstorming/ creativity expert on earth will stress that the best way to get to great ideas is to get lots of ideas. And what's more creative than writing? Plus, this has been proven by hundreds of writers, including me.

Write! Blast away for 10 minutes on what's in your stream of consciousness. Let it Out! And watch your writing explode in quantity and then quality!

Outlining, shmoutlining. A pox on planning.

Freenoting will allow more of your "voice" into all your writing. It's impossible while truly freenoting to not use your own voice. That's exactly what you are expressing! This voice, this viewpoint is what is unique and valuable. Once it's edited, it's what readers are going to love and pay you the big bucks for!

It's also a fine technique to get the garbage out of your head. Once it's out on paper or screen it can be thrown in the trash, something that you are less able to do if it's still in your head!

Be courageous and step boldly into the chaos. Creativity lives there! Many writers find that their best writing comes out right next to garbage. Court it. Just let it rip, baby. The source of great writing is to simply write a lot. A source of ending writer's block is to write, a lot.

I'll talk about editing in the next article!

Freenoting's close cousin, freewriting was offered in the excellent book Writing Without Teachers (Peter Elbow, Oxford University Press, 1975). Elbow's freewriting is the same as what I've outlined here. However, the term has been hijacked and the technique turned into a light weight, warm-up technique.

Freenoting is different from the freewriting practice encouraged in most undergraduate and creative writing programs: freenoting encourages you to be aware of your thoughts throughout, and may be an end in itself — as well as a means to produce a more polished piece later.

Most writing programs will offer freewriting as a warmup tool that is abandoned once you move to "more purposeful" writing.

Freenoting is non-stop writing whose focus is to express all the "now" ideas from your unconscious mind. Freenoting is writing with your internal editor/planner disengaged, and this is it's main benefit.

ImageStreaming

– the super "swiss army knife" of creativity tools!

ImageStreaming is a described out loud visualization process. ImageStreaming taps in to the vast knowledge bank stored in your Beyond-Conscious mind and brings it to your conscious awareness. All the huge amounts of data that you store and process, that you do not normally pay any attention to, are now completely available to you.

Your unconscious mind has been estimated to process in the billions of bits per second by cognitive scientists. In comparison, your conscious mind processes about 40 bits per second. Most of your knowledge, knowing and intelligence comes from your unconscious mind.

Your unconscious mind (or as I'll refer to it — Beyond-Conscious) continually, 24/7, makes associations within all the data and perceptions that you have stored. It continues to do this as you add anything new or begin to learn any other new thing.

This facility allows us to generalize learnings among whole subsets of experience… for example, once you've learned what a car is and what it's for, how to get in and out, and how to ride in it, it is quite easy to generalize that experience to riding in different cars — from small sports cars to large stretch limo's, to trucks, trains, or even airplanes.

To accelerate this normal process and bring more of those insights conscious, ImageStreaming powershifts this normal operation into overdrive.

As you describe anything in detail while continuing to examine it, you discover more and more about it. Your seemingly undirected, free-floating visualizations and descriptions are an extremely sensitive path for the insights your Beyond-Conscious mind creates and holds.

Frame what it is that you want more insight about for your writing. Close your eyes, relax and describe what you see – out loud! Imagine someone is listening to what you are describing.

Stop and write out what you are describing every minute or so. Or even better record it.

Look for points of resistance and insights on what inspires you or surprising new insights that show themselves.

Record what you say and/or do it with a partner. And — this is IMPORTANT: Do any and all editing as a separate and later step. The framework/mindset to build here is that you describe everything, in detail, with no editing! Include all your senses in describing what you experience.

Keep going until you hit a productive line of inspiration. As soon as you hit something that intrigues you, write that down and GO! Keep writing and move quickly to capture all of it.

Stuck? Often just talking about what it is that you have in mind, can bring a lot more ideas and developments to mind. So record what you want to communicate, then transcribe it and edit it later.

When you speak, you are spending very little conscious attention to what it is you are saying – it just comes out!

This is an easy and brilliant way to defeat your "squelcher" and get you started expressing. You can get on a roll immediately!

Use transcription software (Express Scribe, Transcriber) to make it easier to control the playback for your typing.

Or use an internet service like idictate.com, or Fantastic Transcripts, etc.

Remember, the biggest block to your writing freely is trying to rethink, revise and rewrite at the same time as you are creating. But, this is how you've been taught to write, and it has become the natural way you write. Bust that habit by speaking your ideas.

Many non-fiction authors and reporters are now taking this to another level by just talking their books and articles, having that output transcribed and then — editing to the finished product. But this method is equally valuable for any kind of writing.

You can experiment with letting the computer transcribe it on the fly by using software like Dragon Naturally Speaking or iListen. (I haven't had a lot of satisfaction from this process — YMWV.)

You can use this if you have a long journey in a car. Record your book while you drive. Your unconscious is driving anyway, let it write at the same time. It easily can… and will! Not in town in traffic – OK?

This can be a great technique to build the chapter outline and/or to describe the setting and vision for the detailed writing to come. Or even better, just riff on all the ideas that you have had bouncing around in your mind.

Creating brilliance is hampered by criticism at this first step point, so if you can let yourself just talk about all the ideas that you have and then edit and expand on them in writing later, you will find that your writing will just flow and the blocks vaporize. I know numerous people who have roughed out their entire book this way.

If you have it setup in your head already, this can be a quick way to produce. Even if you have no idea on where to go, this can be a turbocharger for your productivity. Just talk it out.

Also many more people have taken their teleseminar or live seminar transcripts and edited those into the meat of a book. If you are more able to talk over the phone there are numerous recording systems that will both record the call and transcribe it for you. See above or search for telephone transcription.

Keep talking and writing!

Describe something, out loud into a recording device or in writing. Something nearby in your environment. For example, you can describe the floor, the desk, stuff on the desk or floor; anything mundane that you have not even noticed for days or months.

Important: Describe it in excruciating, increasing and precise detail.

Start with the obvious and then go deeper and deeeeper with the description.

Describe as though your describing to a blind person, or an alien. Go into the context, reason for it being, the texture, the odor, the way the light plays on it, the shadows follow it, the feelings it evokes in you, the usefulness of it, the problems with it, the good, the bad, and the ugly, etc. Describe any and all details that you can immediately sense – see, hear, feel, taste and smell… and any and all extensions as to purpose, creation, manufacture, asthetic, reason, etc. Describe using just one or two of your senses and then all of them together.

Look at what's there and what's hinted at. What does that shadow reveal… look for what's different, what's deeper, what's surprising, what's funny…

Here's the focus that turns this from silly exercise into a doorway to original writing: Be alert for any insights or flashes, especially if they are in surprising directions and follow them like Sherlock Holmes. Write the flashes down and let them lead you into writing still more.

Once you are writing just keep describing all hunches and nudges. Let your unconscious mind bring fresh insights and relativity by combining what you want to be working on with the mundane description. Your unconscious mind is a master at creating context from totally unrelated things.

This describing exercise is training in paying attention to those new contexts and resulting insights. For more in depth training in this go to: End Writer's Block Forever!