Tips on Beating Writer’s Block

or What to Write When You Are Wiped

I must say that July has been a hectic month. I have been in 4 different cities. A new place each week.

My favourite was Portus 2008 in Dallas where I spoke about the phenomenon of podcasting and participatory culture within the Harry Potter fandom.

(Do you know about Wizard Rock? Rock music based on books ... that is another post. But if you want to divert your attention, you can see my guest post on TechVibes where I give a quick summary of my presentation.)

After a month of travel, with all the best intentions of posting a great Underwire Newsletter ... I am stumped. So here are 3 things that I do when I need to pull a blog post out
of a hat or generate a press release out of thin air.

1. I scan the daily news headlines
Is there anything going on in the world that is vaguely related to my clients’ products or services? If yes, I can usually get enough inspiration to write a blog post or press release.

2. I go through my clippings folder
Ok, I do not have a physical folder, it is an electronic folder. But throughout the day, as I find interesting newsletters or blog posts, I make a note of them for writer’s block moments.

3. I look at my site traffic and the most popular sections
This can provide interesting points for casual conversation (like the fact that our post on graphical user interface prototyping tools continues to draw strong traffic). And it means that I can recycle some content. Check out our nerdy list of Graphical User Interface prototyping tools. See how fun that was.

Bonus Tip. I research silly quotes.
As Terry Pratchett says: Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.