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Close the intro. Promise yourself that you will write it last. Start a blank Scrivener page. Start writing down everything that comes into your head about the topic. Follow your thoughts wherever they lead, but make each thought a new line. Don't organize; just write. When you run out of steam, go back to the top of the list, look at each thought, and ...

Turn off that censor. Have a drink or two. You have to come to terms with the fact that you will "write shitty first drafts," as Anne Lamott says in the writing/life guide I would highly, highly recommend: Bird by Bird. It helped myself and many others get over fears like you're having right now. If you are stuck in the middle of a novel, take a look at ...

The key point with writing is that writing should be a habit. I would go so far as to say that what you write (initially) is probably not as important as the fact that you write. Many authors have confessed to sometimes sitting down and just writing "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and other inane phrases over and over again. Why? Because ...

You have two issues: writing, and what to write. Put aside the "what" for a second. Go get a timer. Set it for ten minutes. Press start. Start writing. It doesn't matter what you write. You can type the alphabet, song lyrics, Schoolhouse Rock, stream of consciousness, what you had for dinner last night, it doesn't matter. Don't edit, don't fix typos, don't ...

I wrote four such books. My first one was 750 pages. The others ranged from 250-400 pages each. My technique was to budget a particular number of pages or a particular amount of time each day to write. For myself, I found that if I wrote more than about 4 pages per day (6 on a good day, it varied), I would quickly get burned out. That's 2000-3000 words. ...

In the initial stages I think you have to free yourself from the notion that you are meant to be producing anything that will resemble your finished book. As you are writing a non-fiction volume you will, of necessity, exist in an eco system of non-fiction works which surround the topic of your work. At this stage it is not inappropriate to re-read and ...

There are a lot of different ways you can overcome a lack of motivation, here are a few that I've come up with. Write somewhere outside of your usual places. This can be a coffee shop or a home office, but it has to be the sort of place you don't do other things at. The idea is to take you out of the familiar places where you can fall back into the usual ...

You are trying to do too much at once. You're flailing around in a cloud. The easiest way for me to get out of the cloud is to start asking and answering hard, definable questions, and completing hard, definable tasks. Create and define a character. Decide what you want the character to do. Give the character a reason or reasons for doing it. Start the ...

I haven't read it myself, but I think this book, The 3 A.M. Epiphany by Brian Kitely, sounds like exactly what you're looking for. It's got very nice reviews - both in terms of score, and the actual description. Here's the first one that sounded like a great match for your question: The exercises also have an additional dimension to them that most don't. ...

If I have other things on my mind, I force myself to write two sentences before getting up from the computer/writing desk/typewriter. At least half the time, two sentences is enough to get me into some sort of rhythm. Also, I do a variation of the 10/2/5 rule (work/write 10 minutes, do something anything else for two, repeat 5 times to total an hour, take ...

Not a writing prompt in a traditional sense, but this has worked for me: improv comedy classes. Every time you perform a scene, you're creating a completely new story on the fly. It's a great way to generate ideas. The story grows organically, and you'll get unexpected (i.e. creative) results. It's a fun way to get new ideas for writing.

I find this a lot with projects I work on, and not necessarily just novels. I have this problem when starting software projects, websites, pretty much anything creative. Usually, the problem I have, is that I just don't know where to start, and that is because I don't have a plan. If I sit down and properly think about what I am trying to achieve in the ...

You just need to shut off the inner critic, and start writing. There are two main approaches: pantsing, and plotting. As I answered in the question linked above, pantsing works for very few people. Plotting is a better approach, for me at least. Write down a rough, one page summary of what you want the book to be, create a few characters, create 30-40 ...

The BBC did a great documentary series a while ago called "In Their Own Words", which consisted of great interview footage with a number of famous British authors, including Huxley, Tolkein, Woolf, W Somerset Maugham, Zadie Smith, and a host of others. Some of the interview footage is available at the BBC Archive. I'm not sure if this is available to non-UK ...

Misery. ETA Allow me to explain my facetiousness. Misery is a Stephen King story about Paul, a writer of a popular series set in Victorian times starring Misery Chastain. Paul finally gets tired of the character and kills her off in what he believes to be the final book of the series. He gets into a car accident in a snowstorm and is rescued by Annie, ...

Lauren has some very good advice there, but the one thing I would add would be a timeline. If the stories you already have are tied together in any way, then try to lay them out on a timeline to show the order in which they occur. Even if they are not tied together, as long as they have a common setting, you could still use a timeline to establish an order ...

I agree with Craig that you should write using the most common words that you are familiar with and feel comfortable using. Remember that you are working on the first draft, and it doesn't have to be perfect. I'll often just type in some running commentary to remind me that I need to come back and fill in more detail. For example, if I am having a difficult ...

Try Morning Pages and/or an Artist Date. Relaxation techniques likely won't help because writing is not relaxing, it's being highly alert in an intellectual sense. Medication, in my understanding, should be used to treat an illness, so unless you actually have an illness, they won't help either. Since you are distracted by worrying about other things, try to ...

I wouldn't recommend medication, as it seems that the concentration issues are specific to writing and these are usually short term solutions with long-term negative effects/side-effects. But perhaps the following aspects, dealing with organization, structure, and anxiety, might help: Organization I'd recommend Silvia's "How to Write a Lot" (Silvia, P. J. ...

First of all; Craig had some really good advice in his post! Thank you Craig for these, I must try out the association tree. Anyway, I thought I'd share a tip of mine about how I practice my flow of words. When I feel the urge to write I have set up a journal which I can reach over the internet. I write what ever comes in my mind and I have one and only one ...

I guess it depends on how the blank page is overwhelming you. If you can't think of anything at all to write, I do have a couple ideas. These are really more ideas to just start running with something so you can get some writing done, sort of as a way to get the gears unstuck. Go to your bookshelf, pick up a book, flip to a random page and pick a random ...

I agree with most of the other posts on this topic, but I have a little bit to add: I think the answer will be different depending on whether you're an established, experienced writer having a dry spell, or if you're an aspiring writer who can't get started. If you're a fairly experienced writer: I find it helpful to read back over my old books. I either ...

I don't like having pending tasks (I use Outlook for them), so a good way I found to motivate myself (for doing anything actually) is adding tasks to it. Before doing anything else I try to complete these tasks. Adding tasks for writing at least a few paragraph (to start) would be a good way to accomplish it.

I've written a dozen of these. Nowadays what works best for me is mind mapping. Similar to Lauren's suggestion, I write down everything about the topic I need to and want to cover in a mind map. (Give MindMeister a try.) Start grouping things into major topics with minor, related topics clustered around them. Keep tweaking, and soon you'll have your ...

Essentially, you're asking, "How can I become a 'punnier' person?" (Or, perhaps more specifically, "What techniques might help me conjure witty puns, rhymes, and play-on-words wordplay more easily?") This is a topic I've mused on for some time. I haven't done any formal research on the subject, but I've observed that some people can pen their parody, ...

I usually combine what Lauren and Lynn suggest, in that I list every phrase or statement I know about the topic, group them together, and then organize into a rough outline. I have used Scrivner, and Freemind and other mind-mapping tools, but lately, I find myself using Workflowy to do this.

You could try a more structured approach than just sitting down and writing something. When I run into this issue, I start branching out my ideas using a snowflake model. You don't have to follow any strict guidelines, just jot down some simple ideas and keep branching off. Sooner than later ideas will pour in faster than you can type. When they stop, go ...

Artists Way, Julia Cameron: three pages a day, longhand, first thing in the morning. Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott: Start with a 1" picture frame and describe what you see. (Also, shitty first drafts.) Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Start with the brick in the corner of the building. Describe it. They're all saying the same thing. On ...

While you're writing, I suggest you write using words you know, in the simplest language possible, and then deal with the issue of choosing the right word during your editing phase. As a very basic example, you could write: She spoke with a low voice, "I love you." Later, you could look up in a dictionary and realise the word you wanted is ...

I focused on the phrase "a character in a book can claim to write it." Does this mean first-person narration? Or are you being more philosophical/theoretical? If it's the second, I have no idea how to help you. But if it's the first, I think that idea could be what helps you organize things. Let's say you want one of your characters to be telling these ...