This Princeton Writing Expert Shares 7 Tips to Conquer Blank Page Syndrome

Since the roll-out of ChatGPT in December, I’ve been tinkering with it to see if it can help me break-through Blank Page Syndrome with some of its automagically generated text.

I’ve been hoping it can trigger ideas and give me some initial content that I can build upon and edit.

I’m not going to dismiss ChatGPT as a tool to help me crack this problem quite yet. The prose it effortlessly spits out is grammatically clean and impressively well-composed. But I’ve invariably felt that the writing it produces is generic, repetitive, and is just not me.

I turned to Martha Coven to get her take on this topic. Martha is a Yale-trained lawyer with a long career as a policy advisor on Capitol Hill and in the White House during the Obama administration.

She currently teaches public policy to graduate students at Princeton’s prestigious School of Public and International Affairs. She's also an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University.

In addition to these responsibilities, Martha devotes some of her time each semester at both institutions to providing in-depth instruction on writing, a subject she’s particularly passionate about.

One of the texts she uses in her class is a new book she published last year: “Writing on the Job: Best Practices for Communicating in the Digital Age.”

In a recent conversation with Martha on my podcast, Write With Impact , she shares several practical and easy-to-implement tips that can help you banish (or at least mitigate) Blank Page Syndrome from your writing routine:

These quotes have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

1.?Ask these two questions before you start to write.

“One of the most important things and one of the earliest things you need to do before you start writing something, or before you start getting very far, is asking yourself that question about audience.

You have to put yourself in the shoes of the person you think will be reading this and ask, What do they need to hear? What do they want to know? So the first question is the who question, who am I writing to?

And then the second question is, what does your audience care about, especially if you're trying to write something persuasive, whether that's public-facing commentary in an oped, or a blog, or something internal.

I always remind my students that there may be a set of reasons that you think something is important to do, but the more important set of reasons are the ones that your audience will find compelling.

Write the memo based on the things your boss cares about, not the things that drive your passion about the issue, or drive your belief that something really matters."

(Watch our conversation on YouTube)

2.?Start early – and let it sit.

“One piece of advice that I think is fairly universal, is to start early.

I think this is true even of writing something short like an email. I find I'm better off letting it sit in the draft folder for at least five minutes and then coming back to it. Because what I often find is just with that little bit of distance, I'll notice a mistake I made, or something I meant to mention that I didn't.

Just creating that separation improves the product. If that's true of an email, imagine it being a speech or a slide deck or a memo or a report. Starting early gives you the time to then be able to set it aside and come back to it.

Getting started for me means getting started early."

3.?Jot down a quick bullet point outline.

“I'm a big fan of outlining. I call it bullet outlining. I don't think you need to have full Roman numerals unless that's your thing.

But before even [writing] something fairly short, if you can jot down three bullet points that are the points you want to get across in this communication, whatever it is, you're probably going to have a better structured and more logical piece of writing.”

(Listen to Martha on Write With Impact on Apple Podcasts)

4.?Use your voice.

“The other thing I often suggest for people when they're trying to get started, especially if they feel stuck, is to use their voice. I have yet to find a student or a professional colleague who feels stuck on something, who can't tell me if I say, 'Well, what's the thing you're supposed to be writing about?'

People can start talking, so talk it to someone, or talk it into your phone and record it. It gets you going.

There are always ideas in your head. I think it's just the blinking cursor that sometimes leads us to be a little bit paralyzed, but your voice often can get you going.”

There are always ideas in your head. I think it's just the blinking cursor that sometimes leads us to be a little bit paralyzed, but your voice often can get you going.

5.?Start wherever you feel most ready.

“It's fine to leave blanks as you write. Sometimes people think they have to write start to finish. Let's say you've done a little outline, it's point three that you feel most mentally ready to write up, and that's what's kind of brimming in your head. So write that and leave the blanks that say, 'paragraph one goes here,' or 'this point goes here.'

Say paragraph one goes here or this point goes here. What I do is I bracket things with big X's and I highlight them in yellow. So I can't possibly turn in a final piece with that yellow stuff in it because I will notice it and fill it in.”

6.?Keep sentences and paragraphs short.

“I'm a big fan of keeping both sentences short, but also paragraphs short. If you’re writing something, you should be giving your readers some breaks and create some white space. Don't have your paragraphs be too long. That's one way to think about letting your writing flow.”

7.?Illustrate your ideas with examples.

“Another thing I strongly recommend in the book is thinking of ways to illustrate the ideas that you're sharing as you work on that first draft. If you're describing something, especially something at all complicated, you should stop and add a sentence that says, “for example”, or “imagine that”, and then illustrate the point.

Don't assume that your reader has the same depth of comprehension and all those examples brimming in their head. They probably don't.

And honestly, it can test your understanding of something if you write something and then you can't fill out that "for example" sentence, you may not understand your own concept as well as you think you do, or you may need to adjust it, you may actually not be saying the right thing.”

Martha shared more valuable writing advice in our conversation, which I encourage you to listen to or watch when you have a free moment.

I'll leave you with one more quote from Martha, which you may find inspiring as you follow your writing journey:

We are all on, I believe, a lifelong journey of improving our writing. None of us are perfect at it or ever will be.

Buy Writing on the Job on Amazon

Connect with Martha on LinkedIn

What advice do you have to conquer Blank Page Syndrome? Please share it in the comments.

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