For Productive Web Browsing, Gearfire Recommends
6 Simple Steps to Outmanoeuvre Writer’s Block
Arman A. is a new author at Gearfire, and he is currently completing his dissertation in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Western Sydney.
I am close to finishing my dissertation. While going through the challenges it has thrown at me and getting stuck with writing from time to time, I have discovered a technique that helped me to get unstuck. This technique can be applied to get past difficulties while writing a paragraph, section, or a whole document. If it worked for a dissertation, there is a good chance that it will work for essays, reports, journal articles, and blog posts. When writing my dissertation I will end up reading from variety of sources, highlighting, and taking notes. After some while I would get frustrated with the amount of information and get to the point when it was difficult to choose what is important to make my point. One day, out of frustration, I lay down, closed my eyes, relaxed, and asked myself, “What is really important for this section that I want to write about?” Suddenly, I found myself knowing exactly which points were important. I grabbed my clipboard and wrote them down. Wow, I thought, this was easy! After that, I was able to replicate the same success many times and bettered the technique as time went by. I thought to share with others - so here it goes: 1. Prepare a pen and a clipboard. Load the clipboard with a sheet of paper. 2. Lie down comfortably, place the pen and clipboard next to you, and be aware of their location in order to grab them when ideas start flowing.
3. Close your eyes. Place the tip of your right thumb at the base of your nose, close to the socket of the right eye; place the middle finger at the point between your eyebrows, and the ring finger at the base of the nose, close to the socket of the left eye. This technique activates acupuncture points to make you relaxed and focused. Take three deep breaths and mentally repeat, “I am feeling calm, centred, and present”. Take another five deep breaths. 4. Mentally ask yourself, “What are the important things that I want to write in this paragraph/section/essay/paper?”. Note that you can ask another question, if your situation is different. 5. Wait for answers. In this relaxed and centred state, your mind is usually clear and you will be able to identify what is important to you. I had many Aha! moments in this state. If it doesn’t work, relax a bit more by taking a few more breaths and asking the question again. 6. Write them down. Once you have answers in your head, take the clipboard and pen and write them down. If you feel there is more that you want to explore, close your eyes and repeat steps 4 and 5 until you are satisfied. When you are satisfied with the answers, tenderly move your joints, open your eyes, and slowly sit up. I found that it is efficient to structure and expand on jotted ideas right after sitting up, when I am still in that thought space. I would love to hear about tips or techniques that you are using to overcome writer’s block. Acknowledgements: Acupuncture technique described in Step 3 is a simplified version of Tapas Acupressure Technique.
Ai said
am January 29 2008 @ 11:10 pm
Hi, Arman, that’s great and sounds really amazing. So the answers actually are within us, what we need is clear mind to identify them, right? I think the technique can be applied in any situations.
Arman said
am January 30 2008 @ 6:41 am
Thanks for dropping by.
Indeed, this technique helps to “clear” the mind by relaxing and focusing in order to select what is relevant. The key to the technique is step N3. Previously, I would do few cycles of breathing to relax and focus on question, but then found that using acupressure points streamlines the process. Some studies have shown that relaxation has some positive effect on cognitive performance (compared with a control group) and recent neuroimaging experiments provided some evidence of improved memory functioning following a relaxation exercise.
And yes, I think with a little bit of creativity, this technique can be applied in many other situations that require clear-headed decisions to be made.
Karl Erfurt | Internet Marketing Blog said
am February 1 2008 @ 2:41 am
Wow, this is a new one for me! I don’t think I’ve ever heard of using acupuncture techniques for overcoming writer’s block before.
What I have doing recently when trying to focus on writing articles is to use the Wordtracker keyword suggestion tool to begin with a general topic and narrow it down to more specific phrases. Then I look at some of the keywords that seem the most interesting to me and choose the ones that have relatively low competition in the search results and write my article so that it addresses these particular topics.
Often the things people are searching for will be in the form of a question, or it may be a topic that can easily be converted into a question. This makes it easy - all I have to do is answer the question in my article, and if I don’t know the answer already I can just look the search results under that keyword.
This technique has been working pretty well for me because it not only helps to overcome the writer’s block problem, but it helps me to refine my SEO skills and optimize my articles so that they are more likely to draw targeted searches and rank well in the results.
paulette said
am February 2 2008 @ 1:46 pm
What im doing to write a good article is to bring a notebook always wherever i go so if there are ideas popping out my mind out of the blue i jot it down.
Arman said
am February 2 2008 @ 10:15 pm
Thanks for dropping by. I found that pressing acupuncture points helps to relax and get focussed much quicker than simply trying to relax using a conscious effort. It accelerates the process.
I’ve never used Wordtracker, but loved your idea of retrieving keywords to identify topic for an article. I wanted to try Wordtrakcer, but backed off because it seems to be a paid service.
@paulette
Thanks for sharing your tip. Recently, I am also carrying a notebook - love my Moleskine - and I don’t lose so many ideas as I used to before
Rapidshare search engine said
am February 9 2008 @ 11:24 am
I just do something that i have never don before in my life.
Jing said
am February 10 2008 @ 6:23 pm
I believe acupuncture points can help us to concentrate while feeling relaxed, but I have never tried to use it for finding answers in writing - will try it for my next wrting~