If you’re a blogger, you’ve probably experienced it - sitting in front of your computer, fingers on the keyboard, cursor blinking.

And blinking. Still blinking.

So, instead of writing you decide to check your stats, read a few other blogs, play a game of solitaire, click the stumble button for a while. You can always post tomorrow. Right? Well yes, but is it going to be any easier?

What are the reasons that you’re stuck?

• You’ve lost interest in the topic. Is what you’re writing interesting to you? If it’s not interesting to you, who’s going to want to read it?
• You don’t have enough information on your topic. Writing about something you know very little about is one of the tougher things to do. Sure, you might be able to wing it for a while - but eventually, you’re going to end up having very little success if you don’t educate yourself fully on what you want to write about.
• Your idea is under developed. This follows along with the previous idea - little research equals little writing. Sometimes as a blogger you come up with a great idea, but without research or planning, that idea will pan out to be little more than an idea instead of the fantastic blog post that it could be.
• Too tired or surrounded by too many distractions. Sure, it would be nice to be a pro blogger, but if you’re like most other people - you go to work, you come home, you go out, you walk the dog, cook dinner, Christmas shop, etc. Sometimes just finding the time to blog can be difficult. And then you find that extra hour, and instead of writing a number of blog posts, you sit there and don’t know what to do with yourself.

So how do you overcome these blogging issues?

First things first. Decide what your blogging goals are and set a schedule.

Img Credit: pittaya

Do you want to update daily or a few times a week. Whatever posting frequency you are comfortable with and decide on, you’re going to need to create a set schedule.

A professor of mine in graduate school would talk about having casual conversations with people in situations like plane trips. Whenever somebody would ask her what she did for a living and she would say that she was a writer, she hated hearing this response, “Oh really? I would love to write, if only I had the time.”

What she hated about hearing this was the fact that the person saying this was assuming that somehow my professor had been granted a block of time to become a writer. As though god had come down and granted her the time that she needed to become a novelist, given her all the time in the world.

That never happened. Writers make their own time. Bloggers need to make their own time. Were the big guys, the professional bloggers, somehow granted a clear block of time to develop their blogs? No. Like us, at one point, even they had jobs and families and responsibilities that they had to juggle along with their blogging aspirations.

What sets them apart is the fact that they treated blogging like a job. Writers treat writing like a job. It might be a part time job, or a night job, a secondary job that they have to balance with their bill paying job, but it is a job.

There’s the old saying, “Dress for the job that you want, not the job that you have.”

Set a schedule for your blogging. If you want to be a pro blogger, you’re going to have to put in the time. If it’s a hobby, schedule a few hours every week that you can dedicate to your hobby.

The first step to overcoming blogger’s block is setting a schedule so that you can make blogging become a habit. If you’re used to writing every night after dinner, your mind will begin to prepare itself to write every night after dinner if you make it a habit.

Second, reading goes hand in hand with writing.

Img Credit: Tom@HK

If you’re having trouble getting started on a blog post, spend some time reading. It doesn’t even have to be on the same topic or another blog for that matter.

I’ll often pull a favorite book off of my shelf and read a favorite section to get the creative juices flowing. I’m no brain surgeon - but whatever neurons are firing when you’re reading are probably the same neurons that are going to be firing when you’re writing.

Like I’ve said, to overcome blogger’s block, you want to make blogging a habit. Make it so it’s second nature to you. When you sit down with the purpose of writing, take 5 or 10 minutes to read. Think of it as stretching before you go out to run. Same thing. For bloggers: Reading = Stretching.

Third, write.

You can’t overcome blogger’s block unless you actually, physically write.

If you’re having trouble diving into the post you want to write. Start with something else. Write an email. Write a to do list. Write a description of what you had for lunch. It doesn’t matter. Just get some words down. If you build it, they will come. Right? Write. If you start writing, your brain will begin to unfreeze.

Those first few lines might be a struggle, you might feel like you’re pushing a stone uphill, but it will become easier and you will start to loosen up.

Here are some techniques, ideas, and exercises you can use to overcome blogger’s block.

Img Credit: Catherine Trigg

• Write an outline. A lot of the time I’ll have so many things going on in my head about an idea I want to blog about, that I get frozen at the beginning because I don’t know where to start. Writing an outline will help you get the ideas down on paper and see how they flow together. After writing an outline, the actual blog post will be easy as it is simply filling in the blanks and digging a little bit deeper into the ideas.
• Steal a first paragraph. This is one of my favorite writing exercises. Take the first paragraph (or first line) of a post that somebody else has written on the topic you want to write about, and copy and paste it directly into your text editor. Pretend that you wrote it and go from there. What is the next line you’d write? The important thing here is to forget the rest of their post. You don’t want to paraphrase them for the rest of the post, you want to use that first paragraph as a jumping off point for your ideas.

Write. Get it down. Write first, edit later.

When you feel like you’ve finished writing, look at that first paragraph that you’ve borrowed and either A) erase it, or B) quote it and cite your source.

Often, using this exercise I’ll end up erasing the paragraph that I borrowed and sometimes write a new opening paragraph to go with the post that I wrote. Because by that point, it’s become my own.

• Change your format. The great thing about blogging is that there are so many different formats you can use. In that respect, blogging is a lot like poetry in that you can change the format to suit the topic. But also, if you’re stuck on an idea, sometimes changing the format of the post itself will let that idea flow a lot easier. Let’s say you’re stuck writing a post about your favorite food - the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You could make a list, write a review, write a ‘how to,’ write a recipe, write a listing of PBJ websites, write about the history of PBJ, etc…

If all of your posts look the same on your blog - challenge yourself to write a different kind of post. It might help to get you jump started again.

• Eliminate distractions. Blogging is an intellectual exercise. It’s not always easy to do if you’re constantly interrupted or distracted. Turn off the television. Don’t answer the phone during your blogging time - you have to put yourself into a blogging mindset - so if you’re constantly distracted by the phone, you’re going to have to reset every time you begin again. If you’re at the gym playing basketball, you’re not going to be playing very well if you’re constantly stopping to answer the phone.

Blog someplace else besides the computer. I have a laptop that isn’t connected to the internet. I’ll often use it to write blog posts so that I don’t get distracted. It is too easy to do something else if you’re having trouble writing.

The most important thing about blogging is to actually do it. Blog. Give yourself time to do it. Set a schedule. Stick to the schedule. Don’t put things off because the longer you put it off, the harder it is to come back to it.

If you set a schedule and stick to it, blogging will become such a habit that you won’t experience blogger’s block. And you won’t have to write that blog post that goes something like this:

Well I know I haven’t been posting in a while, but I’ve been really busy and things have been hectic. I really want to keep updating this blog and I’m going to try to keep blogging…blah blah blah.

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