The start is the hardest part

Have you ever wondered how long the greatest, and not so great writers and novelists looked at the blank page

 "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed." - James Joyce, Ulysses


I wonder how long Joyce scratched his head before he came up with that, and the beauty is that you're catapulted into the story right away. If you are in terror of a blank page or  an empty blog here's a couple of techniques I use to unlock the  vast expanse of white A4

1: Just write anything; without thought of punctuation or full stops or sense, write for 5 minutes in a stream of conciousness and then relax and you will find that clear and coherent thoughts just bubble up. The stuff you've just tumbled out on paper - Freud might have a field day but don't even go there, just bin it.

2: Still stuck? Take a pen in the  hand that you  don't write with and copy a couple of lines from a book or a newspaper. The effort of making your "weak hand" do the work overtakes all other thought and when you finish your mind is clear and open to what ever you want to write.

Of course  a plan does help. When I sit down to write an ad campaign the first half an hour is the hardest work.
That's when you look at the product, decide what's great about it, what the benefits are (you always concentrate, not on the features, but the benefits) Then you apply a little creativity to communicate to the reader/listener what and how great it will be to get this duffel dangle,
      After that you've got a list of maybe ten ideas and it's just a case of writing them into fully formed pieces of copy. Like they say 1% inspiration  and 99% perspiration