How to Get Rid of Writer's Block

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Laura Turner and today I'm going to talk about overcoming writer's block. If you are a creative writer you have that one time or another, actually sat down to write and not been able to write anything at all. This is called writer's block. Something, I have a few basic pieces of advice for you. Something that might be hindering you which is my first point. Number one is that you had not set aside enough time for yourself to write. That you actually feel overwhelmed by all the other tasks in your life and you haven't actually filled out any kind of blank space for you to write. If you sit down with your schedule and you still can't find any time to write decide that either your, you know, three of four days out of the week or one or two days whatever is most comfortable for you obviously. Because overcoming writer's block is about taking pressure off of yourself. Decide that those days out of the week whenever you are sitting on the couch watching TV, you'll instead get up and go write. So you'll take a pleasurable activity, you'll replace it with writing, writing will become your pleasurable activity and as you get into it you'll actually become sort of addicted. It's like exercise if you have to get up every morning and do it, you'll suddenly become addicted to exercising. Try to make yourself addicted to writing again. Number two, set goals for your writing. Don't just say tonight I'm going to write a new story. Say tonight I'm going to write the beginning of a new story. And if you get past that goal you'll feel great. And the next day you'll have so much more to look forward too. Number three watch your favorite films, read your favorite books, do your favorite activities that entertain you, that make you want to write in the first place. Things that inspire you to write. Number four, watch or read bad books or watch bad films. Things that make you want to write better. Things that make you essentially feel better about yourself by seeing bad things. Sort of beef up yourself and say, well I can write better then that guy can. That's not going to help you through the entire process but it might help jump start you a little bit and say, ok that's not the kind of stuff that I want to see and write, let me do my own writing instead. And number five, just go ahead and start taking notes on your new topic for writing. Take notes until you can't take any more notes anymore. Think about the topic until you can't think about it anymore. Think about it in your free time, think about it in the shower, think about how much to start writing and eventually you will have built up enough information in your brain so that when you sit down everything will just flow directly from you. And hopefully you can overcome your writer's block."