Marie-Christine Schindler, PR consultant and author
Marie-Christine Schindler on writer's blockThe best way to prevent writing bottlenecks is to allow enough time. If I have a few days between the assignment and the submission, then I carry the topic around with me, so to speak, I am pregnant with it. This is the time I use to narrow down the main statements, associate them, and look for examples, link them and organize them. When we wrote our book PR in the Social Web, writing bottlenecks were unavoidable due to the volume.
I helped myself in a variety of ways: First, reading Twitter and Facebook student data and chatting with the community was very nice, but usually not very efficient. Nevertheless, I was often able to exchange ideas, especially on Twitter, and that helped me take a decisive step forward. Thoughts and ideas flow well for me when I'm on the move, so I go out into the fresh air, with a notepad in my jacket pocket to jot down key words. Conversations definitely help me because, on the one hand, I then put what I want to say into words and, on the other hand, the answers and suggestions give me a different perspective.
And if it has to be simple? There's no help for that: for the book, I often sat down in the evening with burning eyes and spent one or two hours toiling through a text. The text was always useful enough to serve as a good basis for continuing to work the next day. And speaking of exercise: going to the kitchen and to the fridge is also part of the routine. That's another way to beat the writing block.
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"First bring calm into it"
Nicole Y. Männl, consultant and blogger
Writer's block? That's actually almost never there. The "not blogging" is usually due to other things. Either I don't have enough time to write or I have too many topics to blog about. Then I can't decide what to start with. I always have ideas and I never get bored.
What usually helps is that I pick out a few photos for a blog post and first crop them (almost monotonously), correct the tonal values if necessary, and then change them to the optimal size, including compression. Sometimes it is just as boring as it sounds, and that is exactly what brings peace and quiet. If the phone doesn't start ringing or an urgent email doesn't rush in, then I have reached the concentration phase in which I can start writing. I then put the (pre-sorted) photos into the article and write explanatory text to go with them. So first do the routine stories; if there are facts and must-haves, include them. Sometimes I have made notes in advance, which I copy into the article or rewrite them.
From now on, no ringing or beeping will stop me from writing creative text. It's best to turn everything off if possible. Or just ignore it. The flow of writing has started and now I don't want to stop.