Talk to Yourself - 5 Ideas to help your writing practice be consistent

Developing a Rhythm and Practice of Writing - Part 9

How do you overcome writer’s block? 

It’s hard to keep writing consistently especially when writing is not our work and there are no “consequences” to not writing.  The ease to stop is so much greater than the discipline to keep writing. 

Here are five ideas to help you overcome writers' block:

1. Talk to yourself
2. Bullet Point Writing
3. Prompts and Questions
4. Rewrite & Edit
5. Writing Challenges

Talk to yourself - Change the Medium

Most of my best thinking happens in deep conversations with people. It’s because I am a verbal processor. I talk to think. However, people are not readily available when I need them - so I talk to myself.

Oftentimes you can find me walking around in my neighborhood talking to myself. I am walking and “writing”. I use a tool called Otter.ai. It’s a great tool that will turn your dictation to text almost instantly. It records your voice and creates a synchronized transcript. It’s an incredible tool. 

After the recording, I would read the transcript and begin to refine and organize my thoughts. In this process, usually multiple ideas emerge. These set ideas become the “seeds”, the outline, to write my first drafts.

I have also utilized Otter App to record a great conversations with people (with their permission of course). Processing your ideas with others is another way to supercharge your writing. 

Starting from a blank page is difficult. Talk to yourself (or with others). It should catalyze your writing when you feel stuck.

This entry is for Month-long writing challenge for our The Beautiful Future Members. Every weekday, we write and share with one another to build and strengthen our practice of writing.