How to beat writing stagefright!

Have you ever found yourself in the shower or on a walk full of great ideas to share with the world? I’m sure you have. Everyone, even non-writers, come up with their best thoughts while doing other things. Most of the time translating those thoughts into a cohesive idea comes easily enough but lately I’ve found that when I sit down in front of Blogsmith or WordPress to get a blog post written I get caught up in the details instead of writing.

It’s easy enough to do, just look at everything going on behind the scenes!

There’s links and tags and categories and comments and a billion other things screaming for your attention and on top of that you have 1- Firefox tabs and a Google search bar to distract you with the answers to minute details that you think will make you sound witty and intelligent but in the end only take up 20 extra minutes of your time.

Lately my solution to writing stagefright or distraction has been to switch up where I write a post. My two favorite resources are Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die, which forces me to just write, and Word, because it fixes most of my typos saving me time later. If neither of these are doing it for me I’ve also found that Google Docs and yes, even notepad can be just the change of scenery I need to get an idea out. There’s always time for cleaning up spelling, grammar and formatting later. Now you can even buy an Adobe Air version of Write or Die with more options for just $10.

I know that there are special programs that black out your screen to focus you on your task, and admittedly I haven’t tried them, but I really enjoy the ability to write on any computer I find myself in front. Being able to write anywhere, without a need for a specific tool, location and setting, is just an added bonus of my change it up writing program to fight the distractions and stagefright that comes from associating writing with a specific screen.

Have you faced a problem like this before? How do you tackle these problems and stay on top of your writing?