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Stuck on a Freelance Writing Assignment? Don’t Know What to Write About?

Here’s a fitting photo, since we are in the midst of our first snow day of the year where I live in Ontario, Canada. Ever feel like you’re stuck with a writing assignment? If you’re getting paid to write for a client and you haven’t a clue what to write about, you’re not alone.  As a writer, I have had to write on topics I’ve never heard of, on subjects I’ve grown really weary of, and had times when the muse just seems like he’s on vacation (yes, my muse is male sometimes). But… your clients deserve your best in each and every article you write for them so you MUST find a way to reach deep down and figure out what to write. I have many tricks up my sleeve for dealing with the dreaded writer’s block. Three of the ways I tackle it include: taking a break, researching, and outlining.

Take a Break

Take a break and do something else. Not for too long, mind you. I try not to use this as a procrastination tool. Instead, I think of it as giving my brain a chance to recharge.  Sometimes the break involves beating my high score on a Typing Speed (currently @ 92 wpm, thank you very much) and sometimes it involves taking a walk, washing the dishes, or soaking in hot bubbles. After a bit of time, I come back, prepared to get to work and I try to do it with a positive attitude. If you’re less than excited about the task ahead, try to look forward to the feeling after that task is done and that can propel you toward getting there.

Research

Stuck? Start doing some research. Look up the topic. Check more than one search engine. Check it out in Google News so you can see if anything that’s current relates to it. And, research other articles. Ezinearticles has thousands of articles about just about everything. If I’m writing for an article marketing client, chances are that the topic exists on there already. Read my articles about going beyond Wikipedia for research 1 and 2. Sometimes the start of researching can be tough but once you break through the barrier, you can get inspired to come up with an idea on what to write. Sometimes, if it’s a keyword article I’ll search on the keyword and figure out who my customer’s competition is. Then I challenge myself to blow them away in terms of SEO, information value, and hooking readers.

Outlining Articles

Outlining the article takes away a lot of the work when you’re struggling. It is like creating a template and then filling in the blanks. Figure out what you want to talk about and suddenly, you’re almost done. If you have a 500 word article, you could polish that off in five paragraphs. Come up with 3 ideas or points to cover in that article. The intro talks about what you’re going to talk about, then subheadings break down the article ideas, and then the conclusion is your fifth paragraph that summarises. At about 100 words a paragraph, you’re done.  If you look at this blog post, you’ll see that I sort of followed that outline here.  It’s no fun being stuck but a bit of effort, change of scenery, and tricks of the trade can help you get un-stuck and will hopefully produce something you can be proud of.

What do you do when you’re stuck on a writing job?

EDIT:

I just visited Twitter to plug this post and found a recent tweet that suggests a potentially helpful way to break through with a boring writing assignment:

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