Maintaining a blog is not an easy task.  Writing takes discipline, time and effort. 

Ever so often, I find myself battling fires at work and trying to complete pending tasks at home.  Weekdays are incredibly hectic, and weekends pass in a jiffy…  And I have an adorable nine-month old who makes me want to spend all my waking moments in her company!

Just the other day, I was reading an interview with an Indian writer I admire (while commuting), where he was speaking of how writing is a solitary activity. In spite of being over 70 years old, he makes an effort to rise at 7 am every day and write the whole day.  So I got thinking about all the movies I’ve seen in which budding writers leave their homes and go to the mountains to finish their book… wondering if that’s the only way possible.  Seriously, sometimes life is so fast-paced and demanding that I find days go by without even finding time to read, let alone write.  And when you do find time, you may not be in the right frame of mind to produce anything of substance.

After all, writing takes discipline. And time. And effort.

I will not attempt to offer solutions for all of the above, but a blog I subscribe to – 43 folders – does offer some helpful tips to get out of writer’s block :

Quit beating yourself up – You can’t create when you feel ass-whipped. Stop visualizing catastrophes, and focus on positive outcomes.

Take a walk – Get out of your writing brain for 10 minutes. Think about bunnies. Breathe.

Try freewriting – Sit down and write anything for an arbitrary period of time–say, 10 minutes to start. Don’t stop, no matter what. Cover the monitor with a manila folder if you have to. Keep writing, even if you know what you’re typing is gibberish, full of misspellings, and grammatically psychopathic. Get your hand moving and your brain will think it’s writing. Which it is. See?

Write crap – Accept that your first draft will suck, and just go with it. Finish something.

Read the complete list here.