Many writers allude to listening to their muse. But what do you do when the muse goes silent? Just consider that she’s still around somewhere - just has a case of laryngitis - and write on without her.

Previously, in What is Creativity, I speculated on the creativity of Beethoven, Shakespeare, and Michelangelo. How did Beethoven start a piece, how did Shakespeare develop Hamlet’s Soliloquy, and how did Michelangelo keep on-topic? However, there’s a fourth question - how do you know when to quit?

Many times when you’re beset by writer’s block, your brick wall may be self-imposed.

• You can’t think of a single thing to write about today.
• You have a topic, but are clueless as to how to develop it.
• You can’t keep your topic on-topic.
• Your content isn’t as long as you’d like it to be

Where do you start?

Did Beethoven sit down and write a symphony from beginning to end or did he start with just a few haunting notes that permeated his mind? Were they the treble notes or the bass? Did they begin the piece or did they end up somewhere in the middle… or even at the end?

How Beethoven started isn’t really important. What is important is that just a few notes may have resulted in wonderful creations that have lasted for centuries.

Many times, a major impediment to writing isn’t coming up with a topic; it’s coming up with the title. Yet, just because the title heads your piece doesn’t mean you have to choose it before you start writing the content.

Pick a subject you’d like to write about and write down your first thought on the subject, no matter how short, ill constructed, or trivial it seems to you at the time. You have just started your symphony.

Developing your topic

Hamlet’s Soliloquy starts with the famous “To be or not to be”, but are those the words that inspired Shakespeare or was it maybe these bold words- “To sleep, perchance to dream; Ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come…”

*Although little is documented about the life of Shakespeare, one documented fact is that his only son, Hamnet died at the age of 11 in 1595. Is it a coincidence that Hamlet was written four to five years later? Was Shakespeare perhaps contemplating his own mortality or wondering about the afterlife of his son?

Again, what is important is not what inspired Shakespeare. What is important is that he used his thoughts, perhaps random thoughts about his own life, to create a masterpiece.

Consider your topic and put your first thought on paper (or screen). Keep writing, letting your thoughts take you where they will. It’s surprising the amount of content you can generate when you write naturally, as your thoughts flow. Don’t worry about punctuation, grammar, or spelling. Don’t even worry about organization. You can edit and organize later. For right now, just write.

Be flexible

You’re on a roll now. Your thoughts are flowing fast and if the muse didn’t have laryngitis, she couldn’t get a word in edgewise anyways. Suddenly, you realize that your surfboarding article has taken a tangent into brain surgery! Now if that’s not enough to stop a train of thought, nothing is! But– wait a minute, or on second thought, don’t wait; keep writing!

You can outline a book or an article, from preface to epilogue, but sometimes a story takes on a life of its own. (That pesky muse must have found a lozenge!) Although your present thoughts may seem totally unrelated to your topic, they may be useful when you’ve finished. After all, don’t surfboarders sometimes get head injuries that require neurosurgery? Aha! This wrong-way turn onto a one-way street could be an extension of your topic— Surfboarding Injuries and Accidents.

Okay, this may all seem a bit far-fetched, but remember this: *Michelangelo is remembered for saying that the work of sculpting was simply a matter of chipping away the marble that was not meant to be a part of the statue. Could be that when (and if) his chisel slipped and gave David that extra curl, Michelangelo believed that the wayward chip of marble wasn’t meant to be there in the first place.

My point– don’t be afraid to let your chisel slip from time to time and don’t throw out the block of marble when it does. Could be that an “extra curl” is just what your content needs. Keep writing until the tide goes out.

Know when to quit.

At some point, you will have said all you have to say. It’s time to organize, edit, and choose a title if you need one. After you’ve finished, you may look at your content in complete dismay, believing it’s too short. (Maybe you should have kept those 500 words on brain surgery?)

Go back through one more time and look for spots where you can add those important keyword phrases. Find what is unclear and clarify it. Chop out what isn’t necessary; those ‘golden’ words that already are beginning to tarnish.

*In Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, he says, “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here.” How wrong he was! In 272 words, he developed a concept that has lasted well beyond four score and seven years.

Yet, contrary to legend, Lincoln didn’t write the Gettysburg address on the back of an envelope while traveling by train en route to Gettysburg. There are five known drafts of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, each about as long as the others. He honed his content to say precisely what he wanted to leave with his audience.

If it’s sweet, it doesn’t matter how short it is. So with that, I’ll end this long treatise in hopes that I’ve given you some good tips on how to smash through writer’s block.

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Creativity begins with an idea that burns so hot within that the artist has to find a means (or medium) to express it and share it with others.

However, the idea is only the beginning of the creative process.

Creativity begins when you let your imagination take control of your idea. How many authors have meticulously outlined a novel, only to have the story take an entirely different course when they begin writing the second chapter?

When I begin to think about the creativity of others, I often wonder where it began.

• What was in the mind of Beethoven when he wrote his Adagio? Did he already have the first and last notes inside his head… and all the others in between? Isn’t it more realistic to believe that perhaps, in the moonlight, those first few bars that are repeated throughout the piece, echoed inside his head until he had to express them? Then, did he decide, “I’ll write a ‘Moonlight Sonata’, or did the music blossom and grow under his skill and care, until it became the well-known work that is still so beautiful today?
• Did William Shakespeare begin writing Hamlet with word one on the first page or was there an impasse in his life when he wondered, “To be or not to be? That is the question,” and from there, let the idea take shape and the story grow around it?
• Did Michelangelo’s chisel ever slip? Did he ever take too deep a chip out of the Pieta or carve an extra curl that wasn’t planned when he first laid eyes on the block of marble that would become his David?

Artists express their ideas in hundreds of different ways using mediums that vary in complexity from canvas to cake-tops. My medium of choice is a web page. Frequently I hear others talk about being “held back” by the medium because one browser or another or one resolution or another doesn’t present their page as they intended it to look. True creativity begins when I put my text in the center of a page like this one and then let the page take shape around it.

Often though, there may be a gouge in my “marble”. This, to me, is when the artistic process becomes most exciting- when I must find a way to work around a limitation and still finish with a satisfactory presentation of my idea.

Popularity: 35% [?]

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with reading on the web that narrow text column widths are preferable to wide ones. Because web designers pay attention to resolutions and screen sizes, most templates are designed so that the active window is the appropriate column width. The length (inch-wise) of an article is more important to the webmaster.

The frequent question is, “How long is too long?” Is it better to expect your reader to scroll down or to expect them to click to another page in a longer article? Or would it be better, to keep articles to a length that allows the reader to complete reading without needing to either click or scroll?

The definitive answer is that there is no definitive answer. Just as writers develop their own individual writing styles, readers develop their own styles of reading. Some readers prefer long articles that are more detailed and others like their information in a nutshell. Some favor clicking from page to page and others find the need to click annoying no matter how long the article is.

You’ve probably read or been told to “write for your readers”. If you write for your readers, you’ll develop a following of those who enjoy your writing style. Of course, the first step in developing a following is to know not only what information your readers are seeking, but also how your readers read.

Make Reading Easy

The experts tell us that before you begin reading a web page, your eye canvases the screen for something of interest. Now, this canvas is ‘above the fold’, so if you must scroll to access the meat of an article, your attention may wane before you find the point that piques your interest in the topic.

Although the more white space you use, the less area you have for ‘above the fold’ content, being generous with white space makes finding that ’something’ easier for your reader. That’s also why headings are important to good content. They make eye-catchers out of the main points of your content.

As you read down this page, notice what your hand is doing. It’s probably on your mouse, scrolling the page as you read. Reading on the web differs from reading the print word where you eye travel downs the page.

What happens is that when reading on the screen, your eye finds its point of interest and fixes on that point of interest, reading while you use your mouse or keyboard to scroll the page, helping you maintain your focus on the page even as you search for the next major point of interest. That’s what the experts mean when they tell you that Internet readers scan a web page. There’s more to it than that, but reading while scrolling is a big part of scanning.

Bulleted and numbered lists are also great attention grabbers that allow your reader to scroll and scan while quickly accessing the most interesting and/or most important parts of your message.

Some self-proclaimed gurus will tell you that the tendency to scroll is indicative of the short attention span of those who read on the web. The truth is, that readers, whether reading print media or reading on the screen, are just regular people that bring their normal attention spans to your web content. Your topic draws their attention. How you format your content, holds it.

Give Your Reader a Chance to Click.

They already have the itch. Notice your own urge to click while reading long content. How many times have you right-clicked unintentionally or clicked on a link that you really didn’t mean to click?

Turn your reader’s urge to click to your advantage. Give your readers the opportunity to click to other areas of your site and eventually through your sales process to conversion, using text links within content and breaking longer articles into shorter sections.

Aside from making important areas of your content stand out, contextual links scratch the itch to click and allow your readers to move on to another area of interest or a more specific definition of their present one.

If your topic is broad, divide specific points into separate pages. Keeping web pages relevant to a particular aspect of your message not only gives your readers a chance to click, it also helps you create optimized pages that hold single-topic information that search engine spiders love to eat.

Breadcrumb navigation helps readers advance through a site while providing them with the ability to go back if they choose to do so. It also allows readers to bookmark a page of specific information, something that they can’t do on a one page article.

Whether your goal is to entice your reader to click on an affiliate link or your contact page, sooner or later you want your reader to click. Give him/her plenty of chances to satisfy the urge.

Popularity: 21% [?]

One question that plagues many new freelancers is, “How much should I charge?”

Some freelance copywriters price by the word, but I’ve found that when doing so, your coverage of your clients’ topics can be limited by word count. Additionally, when you’re paid by the word, who pays for the research you do on each topic?

The best way I have found to calculate my prices is using an hourly model. An hourly model gives you the freedom you need to research and write the most compelling copy you can deliver. You also eliminate price haggling when you deliver 510 or 550 words of content instead of the ordered 500.

While the obvious answer is to charge what your market will bear, when you’re new to freelancing, it’s hard to know what that number is. Two resources I’ve found helpful in determining my prices are the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) and Neil Tortorella’s simple spreadsheet rate calculator (just $2.50 USD).

Use the OES link to learn what others in your field earn. The OES search options include national, state and metropolitan estimates as well as industry-specific wage estimates. Use the mean figure for your area of expertise as a starting point in determining your prices. In my opinion, the median is a good place to begin since it puts you in the middle of your market instead of either the bottom or the top.

Then download Tortorella’s rate calculator to determine whether that hourly wage is one you can bear! This nifty spreadsheet has all the bases covered. Start by multiplying your proposed hourly rate by the number of hours you intend to work each week. Then, all you need do is fill in the blanks with your estimated expenses, days off (sick days and holidays), and the profit percentage you’d like to see at the end of the year. The spreadsheet does the rest and shows you how many billable hours you’ll need to chalk up each week to meet your business goals. You’ll not only know how many hours you’ll need to work to earn your desired wage, but you’ll also have written a draft of a budget for your business.

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Writer’s block is a pox on the busy copywriter. At some point, all of us see a huge billboard pop up in front of our faces with the words “Write No More” blinding us in migraine-causing white light on a red background!

Although most agree the best way to cure writer’s block is to take a break from writing, when you have five projects in the hopper and clients e-mailing you for their content, long breaks just aren’t possible.

I’ve added a new category to Older-Space that’s meant to help you break through writer’s block. Blockbreakers is meant to give you some alternatives to start the creative juices flowing again. Here are some of the things that work for me.

1. Blockers - A silly little game, but if you can’t punch through writer’s block, at least you can take a few minutes to smash some blocks!
2. What do you know? - I’ve heard that taking a walk can be a remedy for writer’s block, but it isn’t your body that needs the change of scenery, it’s your mind. There are hundreds of short quizzes on the Internet that will help you reset your focus. Who knows? Taking a trip through trivia may help you find the inspriation you need to complete the task at hand. Try mine and see if it works for you!
3. Phrasefinder - Sometimes, you may find you’re looking for a word or phrase to put a new spin on an old topic. I’ve found Phrasefinder to be a big help in staying creative. It’s an online thesaurus that generates a list of phrases from words you put into a query.
4. CopyBlogger is a great source to find cures for whatever ails your copy.

As I find more Block Breakers, I’ll be adding them to the list in the sidebar! What are your favorite Block Breakers?

Popularity: 36% [?]