You Can Beat Writer’s Block

By Pam Caraway, ACN Board Member 

Banish your writing demons. That’s how the AMS brochure billed freelance writer Catherine Merlo’s session.

Banish? Right. Not even an award-winning writing veteran like Merlo could meet that directive. Temporarily banish? Now that’s doable. Merlo, a freelance business writer from Bakersfield, California, with a background in ag journalism, earned the attention of a room full of writers when she presented at the Agricultural Media Summit in Palm Springs, California, earlier this year.

In no particular order, here are five of the tips Merlo offered to help fend of writing demons long enough to craft a story before crashing your deadline.

• Take breaks. “Sometimes the best thing you can do is take your mind of a story for a while and let the back of your brain work it,” Merlo said. For the science-based mind of an agricultural writer, Merlo added, “Studies show that the simple act of getting up from your desk and taking a short walk can help trigger ideas.” 
• Change locations. New scenery can trigger creativity.
• Enjoy a beverage, but pace yourself. “Two sips, one sentence.”
• Read good writing. When Merlo reads, she said, “I’m looking at how other writers shape their stories.” She also recommended the book “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser. Merlo sprinkled her presentation with Zinsser quotes.
• Fill a blank screen. Start transferring quotes, facts, figures, various details, concrete evidence, anything that you think you might possibly use for the story into the Word doc. Copy and paste from your notes or pick up pieces of data from various sites and note the source. 

“They don’t have to be in order, and they may not find a final place in your story,” Merlo said. This bit of action, she said, is another way jump start a writer’s brain.

After that – or during that, if an idea strikes – experiment with leads, hammer out a nut graph, write a couple of paragraphs.

Eventually, she said, this flurry of activity will coalesce into concrete writing. In the meantime, don’t delete anything. You may use some of it later when you massage the raw copy into content worthy of sharing.

And then you will have done what too many people flippantly say writers do: take the words and make them pretty.