Marketing managers depend on content writers. Writer’s block is the bane of copywriters. What if marketing managers actually have something to do with writer’s block?
I don’t like to make a lot of writer’s block, or whatever name you want to give to hitting a productivity wall.
It isn’t that I don’t believe in it. It’s more that it doesn’t really help me as a construct. Like the Garden of Eden or the Tooth Fairy, it’s a name for something that I honor in other people’s belief systems but don’t really accept in my own.
So here’s writer Stephanie Flaxman posting on writer’s block, with a three-step guide to unblocking yourself. Use it in good health.
As a marketing manager, do you think you have anything to do with writer’s block in the people who generate your content for you?
Maybe you do.
1. Writer’s block and the audience
While I don’t want to call it writer’s block, there are plenty of times when I’m staring at the blank page or the unfinished paragraph, then staring at the clock, then back at the page.
“Funny,” I think, “I don’t have this problem when I’m writing e-mail to my friends.”
“It’s the audience,” I reply. “You know what to write to your friends, and it’s interesting to you and you know that it’s interesting to them. That’s not happening here. That’s why you’re stuck.”
Author Joyce Carol Oates puts it this way:
When you’re trying to do something prematurely, it just won’t come. Certain subjects just need time.
Professional writers don’t usually call up their clients and moan, “I have writer’s block, and I can’t finish this piece for you.” However, you may get a call that goes, “I need to understand the audience for this article better. Can you connect me to somebody who knows the intended reader very well?”
Part of your job in assigning a piece to writers is to tell them what you want written. The other part is to tell them whatever you can about the ideal reader, through buyer personas, for example.
2. Writer’s block and the drone
I call it the drone because that’s what how it would sound.
The drone arises when you tell the writer to give you six different pieces on the same topic, and about the only difference among them is the channel or medium.
“I need copy on childhood obesity in grades K-8,” you tell the writer. “The audience consists of social workers. I need a 4-page paper, a newsletter feature, a page for the website, a print article and a blog post. And I need to link them together so that they reinforce one another.”
That can be a recipe for writer’s block, because there are only so many ways to say the same thing and have it resonate with the same audience, no matter how much you spread it out. You’ll do better to work with the writer on different angles to the childhood obesity issue.
It’s easier for a good writer to search for and vet different angles on a topic than to try to say the same thing in different – but not too different – ways.
Help your writers avoid it
Are you surprised that there are things you can do to keep your writer’s pen moving smoothly? Has your writer ever mentioned writer’s block or other writer’s diseases to you?
photo credit: Brian Tomlinson
