Beating writer's block: some tips for marketers and communicators

If you’re stuck for words and aren’t inclined to worship at the temple of the AI gods, what options are available for overcoming your writer’s block?

It’s an issue which obviously troubles authors, who may have eager publishers hassling them about looming deadlines. But it’s even more of a problem if you’re paid to produce words day in, day out – as I’ve been in my own career as an advertising and marketing copywriter. The pressure in business environments can be pretty relentless, as your deadline might be the end of the day, rather than the end of the month or sometime later in the summer.

Here are a few observations that may help you rediscover your mojo in time to upload that file to SharePoint or press send on that email. (And you don’t need to be someone who works full-time as a copywriter to benefit. You can apply the same principles if you’re a marketer or communicator who’s expected to do some writing as part of your job.)

Stop what you’re doing (just for a while)

This may seem counter-intuitive – particularly if you have an urgent deadline – but 15 or 20 minutes out of a pressure-cooker environment can save you an hour of head-scratching at your desk.

Take a walk around the block. Head for your go-to coffee shop and pick up your favourite caffeine-laced tipple. Don’t consciously worry about the work at hand. Let your brain deal with all that stuff that in the background.

Change location

There is a school of thought advanced by everybody from horror author Stephen King to beat poet Charles Bukowski that you can be creative in the most inauspicious of circumstances. In other words, if you have an urge to write, something will propel you towards delivery and any complaints about the setting are probably just an excuse. This may well be true if you're penning works of fiction.

Writing for marketing or business purposes is different.

You are creating something to a specific brief determined by others and may not always feel passionate about the subject matter. And your deadlines are, by some magnitude, more demanding than those of novelists and bards.

So if you’re stuck in a crowded office enduring what passes for ‘banter’ or the tunes imposed by colleagues blasting out of a speaker, I'm afraid you’re probably going to have to move.

If you’re in your home office and the kids are yelling, the cat’s scratching at the door and workmen are demolishing a wall, you may actually find that you concentrate better at the gym or in a café. (Obviously if you have sole responsibility for the kids, pets or labourers, your options may be somewhat limited.)

Gamify your work

While the word itself may be cringeworthy and has a distinctly noughties feel to it, the principle here is good. Sometimes we have to reframe work that seems boring or repetitive. In the immortal words of the Sherman Brothers (as relayed by Mary Poppins), you find the fun and – snap – the job’s a game!

Challenge yourself to write what you need in the style of your favourite celebrity or Donald Trump or a tabloid newspaper. You now have something on the page and can use it as a starting point. Alternatively, tell yourself that you are going to write flat out for the next 10 minutes and not care whether what you produce is any good. Again, you’ll give yourself raw material that you can work with.

Tell others that you're going to deliver

This works well if you have slightly more time in the bag, but the job is drifting. Perhaps more urgent stuff has got in the way or you can never quite get round to the the task. Set an artificial deadline ahead of your ultimate deadline and tell your boss, your client or your stakeholders that you will deliver by that point. If you conform to a fairly regular psychological profile, you will strive for consistency between what you've said you'll do and what you actually do. It acts as a motivator.

Persuade a colleague to help you

Writing is often seen as a solitary pursuit, but it doesn’t have to be – at least where initial ideas are concerned. If you can get hold of a colleague for five or ten minutes to find an ‘angle’ or hook on an article, piece of marketing copy or social post, that’s probably going to save you a whole heap of time later on. The old adage that two heads are better than one can also be applied to concepts for campaigns. Remember, from the 1960s, ad agency copywriters were typically paired with art directors. The thinking is that together they would come up with something that was more than the sum of their individual parts.

Don’t hate yourself

Perhaps the most important thing is recognising that you cannot be ‘in the zone’ all the time. One of things that distinguishes people who work full time in creative roles in business is not, actually, that they’re geniuses touched by the hand of God. They tend to be people who find it easier to produce above-average results under pressure, fairly relentlessly. They're not daunted by someone knocking on the door or messaging in Teams. But even they will have off days. And if writing isn’t your thing – perhaps it’s just one aspect of what you have to do in a marketing, PR or comms role – you might not have so much of a natural affinity with the process. Don’t be too harsh on yourself.

There. I’ve got through an 800 or 900-word article without having too much of a mental block or praying to Gemini. It can be done!

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