{"id":16,"date":"2006-09-18T17:22:21","date_gmt":"2006-09-18T22:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/?p=17"},"modified":"2006-09-18T17:22:21","modified_gmt":"2006-09-18T22:22:21","slug":"never-stare-at-a-blank-screen-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/never-stare-at-a-blank-screen-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Never Stare At A Blank Screen Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you would like to make sure you never again stare at a blank screen or piece of paper when writing your copy, then this article will show you how.<\/p>\n<p>Once upon a time a guy I know called me up almost panicky because he had a looming deadline and couldn&#8217;t think of anything to write.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;All I seem to be doing is starting at a blank screen!  What do I do?&#8221;<\/em> he asked.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;The reason you&#8217;re staring at a blank screen is because you&#8217;re not doing anything.  You&#8217;re just staring.  Start writing and your problem will fix itself.&#8221; <\/em>I replied.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Oh.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A few hours later he finished his ad and made his deadline.<\/p>\n<p>Listen, simply start writing something &#8212; anything &#8212; and I promise you ideas will begin to flow and concepts that were vague will take shape.<\/p>\n<p>I personally write an enormous amount of content for both my <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/copywriting-services\/\" rel=\"noopener\">copywriting clients<\/a><\/strong> and my own projects.<\/p>\n<p>Not just ads, either.<\/p>\n<p>But <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/ezinearticles.com\/?expert_bio=Ben_Settle\" rel=\"noopener\">ezine articles<\/a><\/strong>, <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/auto-responder-copy-on-steroids\/\" rel=\"noopener\">auto-responders<\/a><\/strong>, blog posts, even entire books.<\/p>\n<p>And yet I <u>never<\/u> stare at blank screens or wonder about what to write.<\/p>\n<p>Never.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s kind of ironic, but I get a tremendous number of ideas &#8212; for all the hundreds of different things I work on in a given month &#8212; while I&#8217;m <u>writing<\/u>.<\/p>\n<p>For example:<\/p>\n<p>When I&#8217;m writing an ezine article, I&#8217;ll almost always get two, three, four or more ideas for an ad I&#8217;m writing or for one of the other projects I&#8217;m working on.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no &#8220;voodoo&#8221; about it, either.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s just how the human mind works.<\/p>\n<p>The late copywriter <strong><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Eugene Schwartz<\/a><\/strong> (a man who routinely wrote tens of thousand of pages of material for his ads, books and articles) talked about this in his speeches.<\/p>\n<p>He explained how when you focus your conscience mind on a task, you allow ideas floating around in your subconscious to &#8220;bleed&#8221; in to the front.<\/p>\n<p>Want to know something funny?<\/p>\n<p>I actually just got an idea for another ezine article while writing the above.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s how quickly and immediately this can work.<\/p>\n<p>The key is movement.<\/p>\n<p>The more movement you create &#8212; like when you&#8217;re writing, for example &#8212; the more ideas will come to you.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, if you&#8217;re just sitting there, chances are nothing will happen.  Because you&#8217;re not moving or doing anything.<\/p>\n<p>If you don&#8217;t want to write to get the juices flowing, then take a walk.  Go for a bike ride (I&#8217;ve gotten hundreds of great ideas riding my bike).  Do the dishes.  Something.  <em>Anything<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Bottom line:<\/p>\n<p>If you start moving I guarantee you ideas for your ads will come crashing into your consciousness so quickly you&#8217;ll probably have trouble keeping up with them all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you would like to make sure you never again stare at a blank screen or piece of paper when writing your copy, then this article will show you how. Once upon a time a guy I know called me up almost panicky because he had a looming deadline and couldn&#8217;t think of anything to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-copywriting-and-sales-letters"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}