How Blogging Cures Writer’s Block (Part 1)

Last night at my local California Writer’s Club branch we had a speaker who addressed the issue of writer’s block and how to move through it. A lot of writers, even famous ones, suffer from this malady.

As I listened to him speak about the problem and his remedies, it struck me that blogging provides a great way to move through writer’s block. Why? Because blog posts are short and can be written quickly.

Many people struggle with writer’s block because they feel their writing projects are large, time consuming, hard, or in some way taxing on their brain and their life. They feel overwhelmed. This stops them in their tracks, hands posed over the keyboard. One of the speakers suggestions was to write in short time increments or to chunk down your work into smaller, more easily-handled portions.

So, why will blogging provide the solution to writer’s block? When you blog, typically you write short posts–anywhere from 250-500 words in length–chunk-sized bits. A 700- or 1,000-word post is long for most blogs. Therefore, if a you suffer from writer’s block for the aforementioned reasons you could blog your project–as in blog your book. If you did so, you would find yourself writing in short burst of time and energy and producing short amounts of copy.

Of course, you could do this without blogging; you can simply decide to sit down and write for 15 or 20 minutes and produce just 250-500 words. You can do this every day in very little time and with much less effort than producing, say, four pages (1,000 words) or a whole book chapter in one day. By writing blog posts, or just short amounts of copy, your writing sessions won’t feel hard or taxing on your brain. It’s down and dirty, quick and easy. It won’t feel hard on your schedule.

I wrote this post in about 20 minutes (with two revisions). It’s 327 words in length.

On Friday, in Part 2, I’ll offer you one more reason why blogging provides a solution to writer’s block.