Tag Archive for persuasion

Writer’s Word Constipation – 3 Quick Cures

writer's block

Writer’s Constipation

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What Pro Writer’s Do When The Words Won’t Flow

Writer’s constipation is different from writer’s block.

Writer’s block finds you staring at the blank page or screen, lost for what to write.

Writer’s block is more of a mindless state.

Writer’s Constipation occurs when you have too much to write.

Writer’s Constipation is when you’ve been grazing or gorging on information for an extended time, researching or learning, but not producing anything from it.

You’re full of it. You’ve been consuming words, written or oral, and you’ve digested that knowledge and turned it into your own new ideas. But you haven’t gotten any out.

Now, you have such a backlog of research to share, new ideas, perhaps a whole book full of ideas – but the words are packed so tightly in your skull you struggle to get the flow started.

You’re constipated in the head!

Where to start?

I’m experiencing this writer’s constipation phenomenon now.

For three years I’ve been researching and studying the various and many benefits which can be derived from a certain part of our anatomy. A mentor of mine suggests now might be a good time to publish those findings.

But where to start!

Three years worth of words and ideas are swirling around in my head. Flashes of genius call out at random intervals – triggered no doubt by some bling in my immediate surroundings.

Rather like the term writer’s constipation came to me while in the shower today. I don’t know why!

But what to do with all these random stuck thoughts?

Is this where I should start? No wait…

Maybe I should start here?

And as we all know – a confused mind does nothing.

Help! I Can’t Get It Out.

Luckily, I’ve lived long enough to know that we don’t have to panic when this happens.

Much like the other constipation we all know and despise, there are cures. Remedies. Some potent like Magnesium Citrate. Some more gentle, more like MiraLAX.

Here they are:

My Three Cures for Writer’s Constipation

1. Pick It Out.

Literally. Grab a piece of paper and a pencil, not a keyboard or screen – you’ll see why in a bit – and start writing down little snippets. One word about your topic or research. Then another. Then another.

Maybe it’s:

  • Potential headings
  • Potential chapters
  • Industry jargon
  • Report Titles

Expand next to phrases. Important thoughts or ideas. Multiple word groups or short sentences. Don’t edit. Write them down as they come. Quickly now! Don’t stop to think. Write. Write some more.

Once you find yourself slowing down or thinking too much, stop. Or perhaps you’ve filled the page. Stop!

Get up now. Go grab a glass of water, coffee, or some other favorite drink. You need a short break to let your mind catch up.

Go back to the paper now. Add arrows to connect related points. Circle or highlight matching ideas with a colored pens. Number things if that’s appropriate. Begin to organize thoughts and words.

Rewrite these on another paper if that helps you organize.

Now that you’ve got things flowing, keep going.

Work on expanding the ideas you have. Or start on another page if you feel you have more to get out first. The important thing is to keep the flow going once it starts.

Stay regular. Write every day.

2. Map It Out

I love mind maps.

Not the computer kind, I get too lost and angered in the learning or formatting curve to find any benefit.

I love the speed and simplicity of pen and paper. Especially that engineering paper with it’s little blue squares. Legal pads are my second choice, followed by blank printer paper.

Strange as it may seem, a sketch artist once told me his “trick” to getting started with that scary blank page. Simply draw a border around the page!

Yes. A simple rectangle. A border. A frame.

Then, it’s not a blank page anymore. You’ve added “something”!

Typically, I’ll write my working title or topic in the center of the paper, then circle it.

Half an inch away I’ll write whatever word seems closely related to that.

For example, if I wrote BODY in the center and circled it, I might write ARM a half inch away and circle that. Then draw a line to the BODY circle.

Next I might write HAND a half inch out from ARM and circle that. Then I might write FINGERS a half inch out from hands and circle that, or maybe I’d square that. Connect them all with lines.

writer's mind map

I won’t give a whole tutorial here on creating mind maps. There are dozens of websites and videos already doing that. And most of us remember enough how to create one from our school days anyway.

Mind maps help you get your information out bit by bit, word by word, while organizing at the same time.

I’ll usually run out of room on the page and have to start over. Or get a bigger piece of paper.

Mind maps provide a structure which helps things start flowing.

Nature abhors an empty space and will suck the words right out of you – if you let it.

3. Take A Writer’s Dump

This last one, I first heard from the late, great copywriter Gary Halbert.

It’s a technique he used and recommended for fighting the constipation’s dreaded cousin, Writer’s Block.

You just start writing.

Nonsense. Any words. Any sentence. Nothing has to make sense. You can write your favorite nursery rhyme. Song lyrics. Anything goes. “Four score and seven years ago…”.

How to bake bread. How to draw a cute kitten. How to safely clean your ears with a Q-tip even though the box says don’t.

Just start writing. Dump it all out. It’s the warm up. Nothing really matters…to me!

It works on the same principle as syphoning water.

You suck and suck until you get it to flow, then it just flows – all by itself.

Conclusion…

Try one or all of these three remedies next time you get a bad case of Writer’s Constipation.

You’ll feel better fast. You’ll thank me.

The Magic Potent Bonus Cure!

If you haven’t got your flow going yet, or are looking for a faster start, I’d recommend you grab a copy of my most potent writer’s remedy, The Copywriter’s Persuasion Toolkit.

Even if you’re NOT writing sales copy!

Its psychological themes and colorful graphics offer unique and timeless insights into inner the workings of the human mind.

It’s like Draino for idea flow.

Using its fill-in-the-blank templates and forms, you can’t help but find the ways and means of presenting your information in a form that readers will eat up. It will literally pull the thoughts from your head in an organized, compelling form.

Use at your own risk*

Available by prescription only…and I’m prescribing it for you here!

Be forewarned though… Ideas will flow out so fast it will make your pen spin. Best to have that paper ready to catch them.

*Safe and effective when used as directed.

There you go. Or at least, I hope you do.

Otherwise, you’ve read this far just to increase the log-jam of information that got you here in the first place.

Take action!

That’s the only way out of this mess.

“Here’s to your struggle-free, strain-free writing success!”

– Robert Schwarztrauber

Persuasion: Satisfy This To Prosper

Persuasion Begins With Knowing This

Copywriting tool kit ad

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We are all born with it.

It makes babies cry. And old men weep.

We spend our lives trying to satisfy it.

We succeed. And then it returns to torment us again, forevermore.

Stronger often. Sometime different. But always, it returns.

Sure as the sunrise. It returns.

For it is part of us. Everyone.

Rich and poor. Weak and strong. Irrespective of color, creed, or country.

What is this one insatiable commonality among all humanity?

HUNGER

~ ~ ~

From the moment of our birth, we hunger, for mother’s milk.

Then solid food. Then playmates and playthings.

We hunger for friends, connection, and acceptance as teens.

We hunger for our stupid parents to stop nagging us!

We hunger for good grades. Cash to spend. Dates without end.

We hunger for college acceptance. Or a job that pays well.

For sick rides. Slick kicks. Bigger dicks.

For trouble-free homes, cars, jobs, and mates.

For bigger things. For better things. For lesser troubles.

Finally, as our years grow long, we hunger for fewer wrinkles, more time, and fewer regrets.

We are born with this thing called hunger. And we die with it.

For the eternity of our life, we strive to satisfy it.

To no avail. It returns.

A hunger for this, that, or the other thing.

We don’t need to persuade anyone!

~ ~ ~

Unless it’s for something they don’t want. And how silly is it to persuade for that?

What they already want…They hunger for it.

This is the easy path. The low-hanging fruit.

Just tell me where it is. And how to get it.

What do they hunger for?

That’s your job! To find, “IT”

~ ~ ~

If they’re not buying, doing, or consuming…

  1. You’re not talking to people who hunger for what you’ve got.
  2. You’re not making your thing appear the most delicious.
  3. You’re not schooling them on the perils of NOT satisfying their desire.

The solution to persuasion?

  1. Talk to those who hunger for your satisfaction.
  2. Use more appealing words and offers. (use the toolkit to find the right ones)
  3. Show them, describe the hearse or the devil at the door. The pain of inaction.

We’re all hungry.

I’m hungry for stuff. Something.

You’re hungry. For recognition, money, or the stuff money will buy.

How Will You Satisfy?

~ ~ ~

There are 5 senses through which you are granted access to my brain.

Vision. Audible. Smell. Taste. Touch or feeling.

You have a tool. A mechanism to access my brain…

Your words…with them…

Let me smell those fresh-baked cookies.

Let me hear the crackle and the warmth of the campfire.

Let me feel and smell the salty ocean mist on my face.

Let me feel the whip of procrastination cutting deep into the flesh of my backside.

Let me taste the sour lemon.

Assemble your words, such that…

Our own wonderful human imagination can make it seem real.

Try it yourself. Prove it’s real.

“Holding that cold, fresh-cut lemon half in your right hand, tilt your head back and slowly sqeeeze that cold, wet, sour lemon juice down over your lips and tongue. Let it spill out, cold over your chin and neck. Feel it roll down under your shirt collar. Feel those jaw muscles clench as that sour, tangy lemon juice glides over your tongue and cramps your jowls up tight.”

You felt it.

Just thinking of it caused a real, physical reaction in your body. MY words, causing action in YOUR muscles, your body.

Maybe you don’t want something sour. Regardless, your body, your mind, make it real for you.

Once we can experience it as real in our mind, though our human senses deny that it is real, we will do all the work necessary to bring our imagined desires into reality.

We’ll do all the work. We’ll act. React.

You Just Provide Sufficient Desire

~ ~ ~

Carrots and Sticks.

Tell me how it will be, this thing I hunger for, once received.

How will my life be better then?

Make it easy to acheive. Remove any doubts or risk. Make the consequences of NOT acting more real, more dire, than it is just to get the damn thing.

Tell me, show me, remind me how it will be if I don’t.

How much fatter, sicker, more disgusted will I feel if I don’t start this diet now?

How crappy, how embarrased, how regretful will I feel as I look at this sloppy, floppy suit on the day of my daughter’s wedding.

How shitty will I feel that I can’t help my daughter pay for the wedding because I didn’t grab the income opportunity when you presented it to me?

So here I am, sitting on an uncomfortable folding metal chair, disgusted in my floppy, sloppy suit which tries to hide my big fat gut at the fireman’s hall, listening to crappy music over cheap speakers because when I read your ad, I failed to act. And my daughter paid the price.

That’s a big stick. Did you use it?

Maybe I coudn’t think that far ahead? Maybe the pain of dieting now hid that greater furure pain? Perhaps I  blocked it out.

Wish you would have reminded me.

I’m hungry. You’re hungry.

Let’s work together. Show me how.

Please! My life will suck if you can’t find the words.

Don’t sell me. Help me!

Hunger is the ONE advantage the late, great copywriter Gary Halbert singled out.

“Give me a starving crowd!”

We’re all hungry.

What for?

For the satisfaction of hunger.

For the FEELING of desires fulfilled.

Therein lies your great fortune.

In Conclusion

The best way I’ve found to figure out what the heck people truly want or hunger for, not just surface desires, or superficial stories they tell themselves and others at parties to seem “politically or socially proper” is to use The Copywriter’s Persuasion Toolkit.

It’s simple graphic illustrations and fill-in-the-blank templates quickly and easily show you where the starving crowds are and exactly what to feed them. To make them FEEL better.

Underneath, just below the hunger, there is a feeling we are striving for.

Identify the feeling. Show them how the possesion of your thing will provide that feeling – without the usual pain,  and you’re 9/10ths the way there.

The Copywriter’s Persuasion Toolkit takes you to that underlying level. The FEELING Level.

It uncovers the rifle shots that burst their Bubble of Preoccupation.

Guessing what folks want wastes time, money, and goodwill. Needlessly.

Why struggle to find out what people want – when there are simple tools available?

Power tools for copywriters.

Many seem to like it. Maybe you will too?

And there’s certainly no risk to try it.

None.

How else can I help you get what YOU hunger for?

– Robert Schwarztrauber

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