Deadline Getting Closer, And I've Got Writer's Block. Advice Needed!

Well, I have written quite a lot of technical articles for magazines in the past and sometimes it has been difficult to get the thing sorted. I found that it helped if I simply put down a list of points I wanted to make and then write an almost stream of conciousness paragraph about each point or group of points. I would then try to give some form and order to what I had written.

I found that the block really came from the desire to have the form of the piece worked out neatly in advance of writing or in getting too bogged down in the detail of a given section. Often I found that the rough stuff I put down was not as bad as it first seemed and that the required editing became fairly obvious once I had the rough thing in front of me. The other advantage of this was that other ideas to augment what I had originally planned came to mind while I was doing this - often things that I would never have done if I had sat looking at a blank screen for ages.

Good luck!

One thing I have done when it has gotten extreme, make sure no one is around, have a conversation with yourself (recorded) about your article. Write it verbally and then listen to the tape to get it in words. This unblocked me and let the ideas flow between the sentences.

Yeah, I get weird ideas, but some of them DO work!!

Interesting. I suppose doing a bullet-point format of what I want to say could be quite useful. I could chop things up and mix them around, play with it, so that I can see what I want to write. Thanks, everyone!