by Lary Crews

Created on: July 09, 2008   Last Updated: January 16, 2010

One of the most common forms of Writer's Block is the fear of starting; the fear of putting words on a blank page or an empty computer screen. Instead of trying to come up with the perfect first sentence for your article or short story, write a whole bunch of first sentences. Set a goal of five or ten first sentences. Make sure that each sentence is really different; a different approach to the topic, not just a re-working of the words. Treat the process as a game and don't judge yourself. Just get the words on paper, then go back and try to find the best one.

Guess what? There will be a best one. There may even be a couple "best ones." Besides, you've started writing, which was the whole idea in the first place. Along the same lines, author Milton Lomask says, "When I'm stuck, I jot down a great mess of sentences and phrases vaguely connected with what I'm trying to say. The exercise gets the juices flowing again."

If you're having trouble starting because you can't get things into the proper shape, write yourself a letter. Don't think about form and structure and the audience you're trying to reach. Just write for an audience of one. Write yourself a letter. Tell your story clearly and directly. Roberta Gellis writes a long detailed complaint about her writing problems to a writer friend and then doesn't send the letter.

A good way to get started when the material is overwhelming you is to write a hurricane outline. That's just another name for brainstorming or cluster thinking. Take a mental inventory. Write the subject of your piece in the center of a piece of paper. Start jotting down ideas as they come to you. Group related ideas together. As you think of appropriate anecdotes or statistics write them near the appropriate idea cluster. You'll end up with a loose blueprint. Start connecting related ideas with lines. Number the items in the order you think they should appear in the piece. Erase the things that don't work. Then you're ready to start writing.

Perhaps the most efficient way to improve your productivity is to create a place you like to be. Surround yourself with things you like to see and create an environment in which you feel secure and happy. If you create a place you like to be, you're much more likely to be there. As Mary Heaton Vorse once said, "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair."

Writing anything from a short story to a novel, from a poem to a magazine article, takes one important

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