Writer's Block: Don't Know Your Today's Topic?

Writer’s Block

Are there not days when you sit thinking and thinking to find an idea for an article and discarding anything that comes your way as crap? Have you been sometimes afraid that the editor that is reading your work may comment to his friends in the office, laughing, “This guy writes crap, pure crap!”? Have you actually dreamed your friend and editor reading your work with clearly strained face, occasionally shaking his head?

It’s all due to your fear of your own writing. 90 per cent of the new writers are convinced that their writing is not up to the mark. You have a hero, a best selling writer, and you yearn to write like him. You feel inherently that you can never be actually like him. This is the cause of anxiety.

Though you may not be as talented as your favorite best selling author, you may well be more talented than several hundreds of published, selling writers. Many new writers don’t understand this fact and unnecessarily strain themselves with unwanted thoughts. This is the basic reason behind the issue of writer’s block. I already wrote an article, the guide to killing your writer’s block. In this article, we will look at another issue: Finding a topic to write about.

I sometimes stand up, put my hands on my head and scream “What shall I write about now? Aarrrgggggh!”

Freewriting

When you don’t have a topic, you may do the same thing too. Freewriting is a way in which you can fight writer’s block effectively. As such, this is no new technique. It already was there in existence for years.

First of all, choose a topic you wish to address today (yes, ironically, to get a topic, you need a topic). Now, all you need to do is write whatever comes to your mind on a pieceof paper without looking at the paper at all. Write freely, that’s what it is.

At the end of your freewriting session, just take a look at what you have come up with. You can read it fully and see what you don’t understand. Questions will naturally form in your mind. Make a list of these questions. Chances are that from one of these questions, you will land a wonderful topic for your writing today. Look at what I did today:

What I wrote in freewriting:

My topic: Freelancing

“I at last thought about starting a freelancing career last year when my mother told me I need to get a job but I was afraid to get any money. In fact it tends to be fair to assume my girlfriend would give me some money to start a writing career. But I don’t know how to start a writing career without writing several topics a day, in fact writing several topics is something every author does though I concentrate on only one post per day. How then can I really write several posts per day? It’s a question I found intimidating and fascinating. It gave me the idea of fighting with my writing day, and getting rid of writer’s block.”

There you are! When I wrote this paragraph, completely through freewriting, within a minute’s time, I ended with the word ‘writer’s block’. I knew that was the best topic to address today at that point of time itself. So, from a mere general topic ‘freelancing’, I came to ‘writer’s block’ and tips to fight writer’s block. I didn’t even have to ask questions and form a list to get the topic.

You can do this simple technique yourself and find the best topic for the day’s post. In fact, this way, you can come up with ten or fifteen topics for you to write daily.

You can do freewriting through various means. One is using a pen and paper to merely write what comes to your mind looking up. You can use the notepad or your word processor to do freewriting, while eyes are closed or monitor is switched off.

Do it whenever you don’t have a topic to address. Please comment what you feel about this.

Copyright © Lenin Nair 2008