Mridu Khullar

1. Try freewriting. One of the most effective ways of making that internal editor shut up is timed freewriting. Set an egg timer for about five minutes, and write anything that comes to mind. While this is something you might not want to do for specific projects, it is something that when done on a regular basis, makes you less self-conscious and frees you from the demon that is the fear of the blank page.

2. Don’t be a first drafter. Most writers, knowing they’re capable of it, try to get everything perfect and right in the first draft itself. There’s no need to put that kind of pressure on yourself. Aim to be a rewriter. In the first draft you outline, in the second, you fill in the blanks, in the third, you do the actual writing, and in the next two, you edit.

3. Get over the fear of judgment. What paralyzes most writers is thinking ahead to the future and fearing what will become of the piece. Will the editors hate it? Will my readers think I’m too boring, too whiny, too self-absorbed? Will they eventually figure out that I’m just a hack and can’t write at all? Relax! Presumably, you’ve done it before and survived. Remember that.

4. Have some bloody confidence. Another fear is of rejection. So it’s easier to simply delay the inevitable, right? What you don’t submit, can’t be rejected. This is probably the number one reason for missed deadlines, stalled projects, and procrastination at its finest. My only advice? Get over it. Get over yourself. Stop standing in your own way. The more you write, the more you send out, the better you get at it.

5. Write in a journal. Along with freewriting, writing in a journal can be a terrific way to free up the blocked creative muscles and to have the inner editor shut up. Psychologically, we believe that the journal is for our eyes only and so we tend to let loose. Sometimes, without intending to, the best nuggets of gold appear in the journal for this reason. If nothing else, journaling too, helps you face the blank page regularly and stop fearing it.

6. Move forward, don’t reread, let it go. While you’re writing, you don’t want to keep going back and rereading what you’ve already written. That’s quite the temptation, not only to edit but to feel worthless and untalented. Some writers find that switching off the monitor helps. If that doesn’t work, try writing with a white font color on a white page, so that you can’t actually see what it is that you’re writing.

7. Make little notes in the margin and move on. If you simply can’t help yourself, mark little X’s in the places where you feel you need rewriting or editing or more information. Instead of stopping in the middle of your writing to fix it, just mark the place as something that will be fixed later. Also, don’t let the number of X’s annoy you!

8. Write as fast as possible. Make it about the word count and nothing else at all. Your goal is to put X number of words on the page. That’s all. Keep the fingers moving.

9. Don’t leave it to the last minute. Two hours before deadline is when the inner editor is bound to be at her worst because now you’re required to get the work done, and fast. Instead, by working on a piece days or even weeks in advance, you’ll know you have enough time to play around, make mistakes, and experiment. You won’t feel the pressure to make it right the first time, and ironically, will free up more, making the writing easier.

Ingredients:

1. A DVD of any season of 24.
2. Popcorn or potato chips, preferably both.
3. A steady supply of hot or cold beverages, preferably both.
4. Sixteen hours of free time.
5. Great company.

Steps:

1. Dim or turn off the lights.
2. Find a comfortable spot.
3. Play back-to-back episodes of the whole season, getting up only for tea or bathroom breaks.

Tip: Finding plot holes will make you very, very unpopular.

Also, (spoiler alert!) protagonist breakdowns and cutting off a main character’s hand with an axe? Bloody awesome!

I’m not a fast writer. In fact, I’m a ridiculously slow one. But lately, I’ve picked up a weekly column, a daily deadline, and another blog, so I’ve had to increase the speed of output. Here’s what’s been working for me.

1. Write. Then revise.
Instead of making that first paragraph brilliant before moving on to the next one, simply write everything in one go without worrying about the quality. Vomit out all the information from your brain to the paper, and then spend the next phase of the process in the revisions.

2. Use the TK marker.
One of my time-consuming habits is the need to look up things while I’m writing. If there’s a hole in my research or something I missed in the first go, I need to find it immediately, ending up spending precious minutes, sometimes hours on it. Instead, now I’m learning to simply leave that bit of information out, and do that extra research together after finishing the first draft.

3. Make the internal editor shut up.
The perfection syndrome tends to show up a lot during the first draft when the writing is awkward and you’re not sure how the article is going to be organized. It’s easy to get caught up in the little details and forget the big picture. Don’t worry about the spellings, the grammar, the sentence structures in the first go. Leave that for later.

4. Organize the article. Then fill in the blanks.
One of the techniques that work really well for me is simply to structure the piece by headings first, make a skeleton of the article by noting down bullet points of points that need to be made, and then to fill out the details.

5. Set out a fixed time for the writing to avoid procrastination.
Because I’m easily distracted, I tend to set 15-minute alarms that keep me focused for those few minutes. If you only have 15 minutes in which to complete say, a section of the piece, you’ll get right to it instead of surfing or checking e-mail. And if the work is really boring, the fifteen minute time period makes it easier to get it over with and move on to the next thing on your to-do list.