Our PR and Communications specialist, Emma Bull, shares some practical tips for breaking through the block.

There’s nothing worse than staring at a blank piece of paper with a copy deadline looming! When you write for a living however, writer’s block has to be kicked to the curb and I’ve developed some useful techniques for when inspiration is lacking. Here are five of them to help those words start flowing:

Start with a quote – Sometimes the hardest part can be how to begin, so some salient words of wisdom can be a nice way to open. Sites like Good Reads have thousands of popular quotes divided up by keywords like ‘success’ or ‘knowledge’ and searchable by author, so it’s well worth having a trawl.

What are others saying? – It’s both helpful and good practice to have a look at what other people are saying about the same subject. If it’s an opinion piece, copy and paste some differing views to stimulate your thought process. You can always directly quote someone who supports your argument, or whose views you disagree with and explain why.

Get factual – If it’s a factual piece, research and statistics are your best friend!  Copy and paste anything interesting and relevant on to your page to help get you started. If you reference anything in your finished piece, remember to name the source.

Start at the end – You might not know how to start your piece of writing but you are much more likely to know how you want to end it, especially if it’s something with a set agenda or call to action. In this case, draft your final paragraph first – it stops you from looking at a blank page and gets you focused on your core agenda.

Just write – This may sound obvious but those who don’t write on a regular basis can easily get hung up on getting the perfect words down on paper. Those of us who write regularly know that your final copy is invariably the product of a number of edits. So, however imperfect your first thoughts may seem, just write them down and look at them as your rough draft. Bullet points can work here too – if you have a view of some key elements you want to cover, map them out in bullets and then look to gradually expand each bullet into paragraphs.

The overarching theme here is try to avoid staring at a blank page, as this will only deepen your block and the resulting anxiety. A page full of bullets, with some supporting facts and quotes is relatively easy to pull together and gives you a much less daunting place to work from. Don’t be afraid to write and edit and then edit some more. As Thomas Edison said “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Hopefully, you won’t need to edit to that extent, but you get my drift.  I hope some of my techniques help, or of course you can always call upon the services of a communications specialist to write copy for you instead!