ProBlogger: 3 Varieties of Bloggers Block I’ve Suffered From [And What I Did About Them]

3 Varieties of Bloggers Block I’ve Suffered From [And What I Did About Them]

Posted: 05 Sep 2013 08:37 AM PDT

Where do you get ‘stuck’ in your blog writing?

Today – in preparation for my opening keynote for next weeks ProBlogger Training Event – I was reflecting upon some of the obstacles I’ve faced in my blogging over the years.

One of the recurring obstacles that I’ve tackled at different times has been ‘bloggers block’.

Most bloggers face it – the inability to write!

As I pondered the different bouts of bloggers block that I’ve faced I realised that there are actually a number of different types of bloggers block – or rather there are different stages of the blog writing process that I’ve had periods of getting ‘stuck’.

3 Varieties of Bloggers Block I’ve Suffered From [And What I Did About Them]

Here’s 3 types of bloggers block that I’ve suffered (please add yours to the list in comments below):

1. An Ideas Impediment

Two years ago I hit a patch where I found blogging really tough because I kept getting stuck on coming up with ideas of what to write about.

Post topic ideas eluded me at every turn!

I guess I had gotten to a point in the life of my blogs where I’d covered hundreds… no thousands… of topics and was looking for something completely fresh and new to share.

Solution: what ended up snapping me out of this bout of bloggers block was sitting down with a friend to brainstorm together some topics to blog about.

I found that with his encouragement that we quickly came up with a heap of topics/titles for blog posts. Once I got those ideas they just kept on coming!

2. Hitting the Writing Wall

Earlier this year I had a patch where I had plenty of ideas for blogging but found it difficult to get into a regular rhythm of actually writing.

Looking back I think it was partly because I was so busy that I’d gotten out of the practice of writing and had fallen for the trap of doing my writing at the end of the day when I was tired rather than in my golden hours (for me I am at my creative best between 9-11am).

Solution: the solution this bout of bloggers block was again pretty simple. I changed the structure of my week around a little to make more time for blogging and put aside two blog post creation times in my week (Monday and Wednesday mornings) where I switched off Skype, Twitter, Email and my phone and just wrote!

I also decided to mix up some of the places that I blogged to give me a little fresh motivation. It took a few weeks to get back into the groove but the more I did it the better things got!

3. Completion Constipation

A a number of years back I had a serious problem of starting but not completing blog posts. I had a serious backlog of unfinished posts… but I couldn’t get them out!

I’m embarrassed to admit it but at its worst I had 93 half written posts uploaded as drafts here on ProBlogger.

Add to that were the notebooks full of blog post ideas and half written posts in text documents on my computers desktop and you can see I had a problem.

I would get so excited with my new ideas that I’d start writing but halfway through a post I’d either get distracted by another idea or lose interest in what I was writing!

Solution: the solution to this one was pretty logical. I decided to put aside time each week to work on posts that I’d not completed.

At the time I decided to dedicate evenings to this task as in most cases most of the creative work had already been done in the posts and it was just a matter of finishing things off, proof reading and polishing the posts up before scheduling them.