Dealing with Writer's Block

James Abela guestblogs this piece about writers block, which I'm sure the writers among you will find useful. Do feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.

Dealing with writer's block

If you do a lot of writing, then you'll know that there are days when you just can't think of anything interesting to write or there's a dreaded piece of blank paper awaiting you. As a teacher of creative writing and an author I get asked about writer's block a lot and everybody wants a quick fix. There is a quick fix, but it is a painful because you have to admit to yourself why you are not writing. In nearly all the cases I have seen, it comes down to one of following reasons:

1. You don't really want to write it in the first place

This is a classic problem and one that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had terrible difficulties with, he'd created the legendary Sherlock Holmes and really didn't want to write about him any more, in fact he was loathed to write about him that he tried to kill him off only to be greeted by protests and thousands of letters demanding that he bring him back. In his case the motivation to continue writing was either to do it or become the most unpopular man in Victorian England. In a similar way when faced with something you don't wish to write, you must think of the bigger picture and why you need to write the piece.

2. You don't have any ideas

Sometimes you just can't think what to do next and there are a number of ways to fix this. If it is half way through a piece, then the best thing to do is find somebody you trust to help you and bring in a fresh perspective. If it is something new then do some research, which may be as simple as reading some books, watching television, visiting somewhere new or even just reading something random on the Internet.

3. You think your writing is bad

It is better to write something terrible and edit it than have nothing at all. I used to work in PR and I used to hate the fact that my boss would always make do the 1st draft, tell me all that was wrong with it in a few seconds and tell me to fix it. She did it because it took a lot less effort to correct something, than to come up with that first draft. I have seen some terrible manuscripts in my time, but it is a lot easier to say what needs to be done to improve something than to come up with a first draft. In the same way you can be your own editor, come up with that first draft and then go back and improve it.

4. You are stressed

Sometimes your mind is stressed and overworked and where possible the best thing you can do is to take a break, take a holiday or at the very least work on something else until you can come back to it with a fresh pair of eyes.

Hopefully the next time you think you have writer's block, you will look inwards and from there work out a solution.

James Abela is the author of X-Treme Creative Writing, X-Treme Factual writing and X-Treme Speed Reading. His books are available at all good bookshops and at the Marshall Cavendish stand at the KL Book fair. His Website is here.

4 Bad Reading Habits Picked up at School

This piece is guest-blogged for us by James Abela, author of X-treme Speed Reading and X-treme Creative Writing.

There are many reasons why people read and for those of you who want to sit down with a good book, relax and savour every moment, even I can confirm that you don’t need to speed read through the book! However for many of us our jobs depend upon being able to read quickly and efficiently. When I was a Webmaster I had to maintain 3000 pages and even as a hobby I maintain about 250 pages. Furthermore the average undergraduate should read 10,080,000 words per semester. (Check out my website for the calculation.) For these reasons it is imperative that you learn to read faster. Like any other skill before we start to acquire new techniques we must understand what maybe slowing us down and quite frankly rather like smoking, a lot of kids picked up some bad habits at school! So let us have a look at those bad habits and how they are slowing down your reading speed.

Reading Out Loud

Many children’s reading abilities are tested by reading out loud and this is fine if you want to test a child’s ability to pronounce the words, but it does not test comprehension and worse it can leave a nasty side-effect: sub-vocalisation (the voice inside people’s heads). I can hear it now as I type, but the difference is that I am typing as I think and a typing speed of 100 words per minute is not bad. If you can hear that voice now as you read, then I am afraid your Ferrari of a brain is being kept in gear 1. Incidentally, words per minute (wpm) is the official measure of typing speed in a minute and a word is any five characters.

Using Your Hands

Some of us were told NOT to use our hands when reading, so we were expected to track our reading by simply looking at the page. Teachers at my school were fairly abusive and regularly used to point out my so-called stupidity. In actual fact, removing your hands when reading is the act of stupidity, because your hands are a great metronome and cannot only keep track of where you are but also encourage you to speed up your reading.

Skipping to the Back

Of course teachers do not want you to read the answers in the back of the book, but that does not mean you now have to read from the beginning to the end of every book. Sometimes, reading the end first can be a tremendous help. I have a personal hatred of books that leave you a cliffhanger and you have to wait for an eternity for the next book to appear.

In-Depth Comprehension Tests

Let us not forget that many a time people need to read something at a certain level of depth. I have seen too many English textbooks that just test the depth of the learners' reading ability and never their overall understanding of the text.

In this regard, books designed for students learning English as a foreign language are far superior and ask for an overview before getting into questions that require intensive reading. Imagine reading the telephone directory line by line to find the information you need, I doubt many people would get beyond the letter ‘a’. Not everything you read needs to be read so intensively.

Once we have understood why these habits are bad for us, then we are ready to begin the journey towards reading faster, with purpose and clear understanding of the information we have digested. To find out more and test your reading speed, visit my website.

Or if you are in Kuala Lumpur for the book fair (In PWTC) drop by the Marshall Cavendish booth stand number 3156 in Hall 3 and pick up a copy of X-Treme Speed Reading. On the 13th April at 3.30pm I will be doing a presentation at the Activity Hall.

James Abela originally came from an online Marketing background, his biggest responsibility was looking after 5000 pages for ARM Plc in England. Since he's started teaching he's done teacher-training, taught absolute beginners through to advanced, IELTs and the Cambridge exams and worked for a few companies and the big names include: British Council, Ministry of Defence, New Straits Times, University of Southern California, Sanofi and DHL.