Guest article by: TJ Philpott

If you’re involved in any type of article writing online or off you have undoubtedly encountered various episodes of writers block. Ugh!

You know the feeling. Your thought process comes to a screeching halt. It almost seems like a form of ‘mental quicksand’ the harder you try to produce an intelligent verse the harder it gets.

Well what can we do ‘pre-empt’ these periodic attacks on our writing skills?

Let’s examine some of the common reasons we all suffer from these disruptions in our article writing efforts.

• Coming up empty when trying to compose the opening line.

• The inability to maintain concentration

• Not doing your ‘homework’ when preparing to write an article. You will find that this is usually the core of the problem.

• Spending too much time ‘getting ready to get ready’! Our own over analysis clearly indicates doubt. This doubt or fear is normal assuming you don’t want your writing skills or content to be criticized by everyone who reads your work. Also this point towards a lack of preparation and indicates more work needs to be done in the area of article research.

• Trying to edit your work as you are composing. This is a great way to disrupt your concentration.

• Procrastination is often the most common obstacle you will face. This again finds it roots in the lack of preparation. If you’re not sure what it is to be done we naturally stall as much because of this indecisiveness.

Now we need to determine exactly how to resolve and banished these issues that impede our progress and turn a simple task into a nightmare.

Here we’ll find that ‘taking action’ most times is all that’s required to get you moving forward again.

Here are some writing tips that will help get you over the hump and back on track:

• Don’t allow yourself to get hung up on the opening sentence. If it comes to you great, if not move on. When you write an article you should have a good grasp of the subject matter. Compose those areas of the article that come quickest to you and address the opening sentence later if need be.

• The proper article research will often allow you to smoothly compose your article with little hesitation. Be sure to set aside the time needed and a quiet environment in which to write an article.

• Let your thoughts flow and record them as they do. You can and should set aside a ‘separate’ time to edit your composition. Later when editing you can ‘smooth’ over any grammatical errors and ‘polish’ up your delivery. You will save a lot of time by doing this and it will make both your composing and editing that much easier.

• Multi-tasking may serve a purpose in areas that don’t require concentration but when article writing this is NOT the case. Separating your research, your writing and your editing is always highly recommended. This allows for a continuity of thought in the particular area you are focusing on and cuts down on both time and frustration.

Writers block is a common nemesis that can be defeated with the proper preparation and discipline. By following these aforementioned writing tips you should be able to avoid the mental paralysis that occasionally strikes all writers. This in turn will greatly reduce the time it takes you to compose the article. Your preparation will result in you being able to continually progress through the various stages of your article writing. In the end this will help prevent your thoughts from becoming disrupted and slowing your progress to a standstill!

About The Author:
TJ Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina. For additional online success tips and a free guide that demonstrates how to find both profitable markets and products visit: http://affiliatequickstart.com.

Article source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/writing/article_1709.shtml

Image: sxc.hu.

One of the questions I usually ask during the interviews I do on Working Writers has to do with writer’s block. Specifically, the question is:

Do you believe in writer’s block? If so, how did you get past it? If not, why not?

I ask the question this way because I, personally, do believe writers can get blocked. I’ve never experienced it, but I think it can happen. I’ve always had too many projects at once going on, so if I got “stuck” for a minute I might hop to the next thing. But I acknowledge that a writer under deadline can get blocked.

I’ve come across some wonderful advice for writers in regards to this area. If you’ve experienced writer’s (or blogger’s) block, here are a few posts that could possibly help.

• Great post by Nadia Ballas-Ruta called “Writer’s Block…A Thing Of The Past,” over at Write to Done.
• I recently met Marcus Sakey at a booksigning, and found that he had some wonderful tips for writer’s on his website. One of them is an article called “How Not to Knock Yourself Out of the Game” and another is “Celestial Navigation.” I think you’ll find them both helpful. (And don’t forget to read our interview with Marcus if you haven’t yet!)
• National Novel Writing Month begins soon, and it leaves no room for writer’s block. I found some very fun “Widgets to Cure Writer’s Block for NaNoWriMo” over at the Language is a Virus site.

Bloggers aren’t immune to getting writer’s block either. In fact, it might happen more often to bloggers, especially when they have so many different blogs they are trying to populate. Here are a few posts about blogger’s block.

• Sometimes writer’s block is wrapped up on stress. On Yaro Starak’s Entrepreneur’s Journey blog, he lists ““6 Tips To Reduce Your Stress.”
• Darren Rowse mentions ways to combat blogger’s block at his blog, ProBlogger.
• John Chow lists “Five Things To Do When You Have Nothing to Blog About,” at his popular blog. (Something tells me John doesn’t suffer from this very often!

Image: sxc.hu.