Naima B. Robert – Advice for Muslim Writers about Writers Block!

I'm trying sis. I am trying to write

my book but the words just aren't coming.

Sound familiar?

Sounds like the dreaded writer's block if you

ask me and it's something that I've heard

so many times since I started coaching writers

all over the world. So what is writer's

block and what can you do about it?

Well, my name is Naima B Robert and

I'm an award winning author of almost 30

books for children, teens and adults. And I

happen to be a book coach and I'm

on a mission to help create 2 122

Muslim authors by the end of the year.

So in this series,

I'm offering you some of the coaching

that I offer

my premium clients.

So let's have a chat about writer's block.

Everyone's heard about it. Many of you who

may have experienced it before. And when it

comes to working on a book,

you know, that feeling of just feeling

like there's a blockage

is very, very real. So when I have

a weekly coaching call with my clients and

one of them says, you know, I feel

like I'm blocked. Just the words are not

coming. I don't know what to do about

it.

I always invite them to reframe because writer's

block is something that everybody accepts as a

reality. Right? I personally

on the side of challenging that notion

because Seth Godin was the one I believe

who said, you know, everybody's going on about

writer's block, but have you ever had speaker's

block?

Most of us don't feel so comfortable saying

that we've had speaker's block because we all

pretty much have thoughts. We have ideas. We

have opinions. We have something to say.

When it comes to writer's block for some

reason,

we get stuck. So what I say to

my clients is firstly,

reframe.

Ask

yourself, do I have writer's block? If I

was speaking, if I was sharing this story

verbally, would I not know what to say?

The answer is usually

no. I would know exactly what I want

to say. That's why I'm writing the book.

So what I say to them is okay,

talk it out. After you've done the reframe,

you've kind of asked yourself that challenging question.

Say, is this really writer's block or is

there just a resistance coming from somewhere?

Reframe that, ask yourself, you know, if this

was a speaking, would I know what I

wanted to say? The answer is yes. Talk

it out. In our program, we share certain

tips with our clients on how they can

use talk to text, where they can speak

the words into their phone and it will

type it for them, but talk it out.

Don't stop when you think you have writer's

block.

Move to audio,

record your voice saying whatever it is that

you want to say, Alright? And make up

your word count that way. That's one of

the tricks that we use in our program.

It's helped many of our authors get to

where they want to get to when it

comes to their word count. Right? So talk

it out. And also

remember that a lot of the time losing

track of what is it you were

saying can be

a hint that your planning

is perhaps not detailed enough.

We get all our clients to plan their

books right at the start to do the

heavy lifting

before they start writing.

But if your chapter headings are very vague

and you haven't broken down each chapter into

subheadings and included the topics that you're going

to cover in each chapter

In your planning stage, you may find that

basically you just don't have enough planning for

that chapter. You haven't done enough brainstorming.

You haven't done enough of the heavy lifting

to get to that chapter and be super

clear on what exactly you want to say

in this chapter.

So that is another thing that you could

do. If you know what you want to

say, talk it out. If you really genuinely

are at a loss as to what am

I supposed to be saying here, doing here,

you need to go back to the brainstorming

stage. You need to give yourself a fresh

sheet of paper, you know, a fresh whiteboard

and literally do a brain dump and get

all your ideas on this particular topic. Just

dump them out. Okay. Have a look at

what you've got and start grouping it into

compartments. That make sense.

Put that into a list and then go

back to your writing and start to write

the things on the list. Make the points

on the list, share the experiences on the

list, tell the stories on the list and

take them off as you go along. That's

the process that works for my clients but

tell me what you think. Let me know

in the comments

what was useful for you and if you

would like to be one those 222 Muslim

authors that we celebrate at the end of

the year,

simply comment apply on this video and we'll

send you information on how you can work

with us. I hope that was useful

and I will see you on the next

one. And don't forget your book is your

legacy.

So let's get it right.