Six Tips for Beating Writers Block

Is there anything more terrifying for a writer than a blank sheet of paper?

This weekend, with a flash fiction competition to write for, I found my mind churning with other things. The page stayed white, except for the incessent flashing of the curser. How many other writers find it hard to write when their head is somewhere else? The words lack flow, the characters don’t shine, and the plot is tepid at best.

I thought back to times I had struggled to write in the past. What worked then? This is what I came up with:

1. Empty the excess from your head. Get the chores done, clear the clutter from your desk. Take a walk.
2. Write something. Anything on the page, however bad, is better than nothing.
3. If you’re struggling on your current assignment, write something else, anything. Just get the words flowing.
4. Try a free flow writing exercise. I have a ‘Writer's Block’ that I picked up at a second hand bookshop in Hay-on-Wye. Each page gives a word, a picture, a sentence to spark your imagination. But you could open the newspaper and pick a headline, or use something like this prompt cloud from the Open University and Futurelearn’s Start Writing Fiction course. Write whatever comes into your head, without editing or even punctuation (if you dare)!
5. Review your notebook for ideas you can use.
6. Read something inspiring. I have several writing books on my bookshelf (On Writing by Stephen King and The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman to name two). They never fail to get me feeling excited again.

I wrote my flash fiction - theme 'SACRIFICE'. The winner is announced tomorrow so the jury is still out on how good it is...but I did it.