Poet William Stafford claimed to not be afflicted by writer's block because he followed one bit of self-advice: "Lower your standards." One of the main sources of writer's block is the pressure writers put on themselves to write well, or even just to begin well. But no writer can hit it out of the park every time they sit down to the keyboard. If the ideas or the words are not coming, sometimes it helps to scale down one's ambitions. Maybe today it would be better to focus on something small, or to keep things simple. What happens as a result is that you will write something. Even if it is not your best work, it keeps the wheels turning until the next time you write. Or what sometimes happens is that once you are freed of the pressure to write something brilliant, the words and ideas flow more easily and the work is better than you first expected. The point is that "Lower your standards" brings humility into the mix, and that is often just what the situation calls for.
2 Answers By Expert Tutors
Writer's Block is the absence of the pathway to ideas, but a few writers' can regenerate the flow of ideas through pre-writing activities. Here are some tips:
- Start with questions--Who? What? Where? When? How? Why?
- Look at photographs. The photographic observation is a continuation of writing details of 1. What you see? 2. Whom do you see? 3. Where do you see the action? 4. When did the event happen? 5. How did the event happen? 6. Why did the event happen?
- Talk with friends, classmates, teachers, tutors, and lab partners, and others who like sounds, music, and dance to find ideas for expressions, entertainment, processes, explanations, and methods, clarifications, of the types of writing you are creating.
- Do not stop working. Keep on free-writing, and deo not strive for perfection. By demanding perfection, you will stop your flow, your fluency.
- View spelling errors or punctuation mistakes as opportunities for learning.
- Review and you will see your draft as a chance to correct your first trial at writing. It is your chance to rewrite and fix your 1st draft.
- Focus on order sequence, unity, (sticking together as a logical whole) or coherence before editing or correcting grammar errors, spelling mistakes, omissions, and deletions.
- Follow a checklist for revisions: Concentrate on the essay's ideas, support, and organization before editing. Do not forget to save your work on backup drives.
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