This Strange Technique Will Help You Get Over Writer's Block

Ever heard of Automatic Transcription? Yah, me neither. It is an unusual way writers can get rid of writer’s block. This guest article by Jason Kincaid was originally published by Descript and has been posted here with their permission:

If you’re a writer — of books, essays, scripts, blog posts, whatever — you’re familiar with the phenomenon: the blank screen, a looming deadline, and a sinking feeling in your gut that pairs poorly with the jug of coffee you drank earlier.

If you know that rumble all too well: this post is for you. Maybe it’ll help you get out of a rut; at the very least, it’s good for a few minutes of procrastination.

Here’s the core idea: thinking out loud is often less arduous than writing. And it’s now easier than ever to combine the two, thanks to recent advances in speech recognition technology.

Of course, dictation is nothing new — and plenty of writers have taken advantage of it. Carl Sagan’s voluminous output was facilitated by his process of speaking into an audio recorder, to be transcribed later by an assistant (you can listen to some of his dictations in the Library of Congress!) And software like Dragon’s Naturally Speaking has offered automated transcription for people with the patience and budget to pursue it.

But it’s only in the last couple of years that automated transcription has reached a sweet spot — of convenience, affordability and accuracy—that makes it practical to use it more casually. And I’ve found it increasingly useful for generating a sort of proto-first draft: an alternative approach to the painful process of converting the nebulous wisps inside your head into something you can actually work with.

I call this process idea extraction (though these ideas may be more accurately dubbed brain droppings).

Part I: Extraction

Here’s how my process works. Borrow what works for you and forget the rest — and let me know how it goes!

• Pick a voice recorder. Start talking. Try it with a topic you’ve been chewing on for weeks — or when an idea flits your head. Don’t overthink it. Just start blabbing.

• The goal is to tug on as many threads as you come across, and to follow them as far as they go. These threads may lead to meandering tangents— and you may discover new ideas along the way.

• A lot of those new ideas will probably be embarrassingly bad. That’s fine. You’re already talking about the next thing! And unlike with text, your bad ideas aren’t staring you in the face.

• Consider leaving comments to yourself as you go — e.g. “Maybe that’d work for the intro”. These will come in handy later.

• For me, these recordings run anywhere from 20–80 minutes. Sometimes they’re much shorter, in quick succession. Whatever works.

Part II: Transcription

Once I’ve finished recording, it’s time to harness ⚡️The Power of Technology⚡️

A little background: over the last couple of years there’s been an explosion of tools related to automatic speech recognition (ASR) thanks to huge steps forward in the underlying technologies.

Here’s how ASR works: you import your audio into the software, the software uses state-of-the-art machine learning to spit back a text transcript a few minutes later. That transcript won’t be perfect—the robots are currently in the ‘Write drunk’ phase of their careers. But for our purposes that’s fine: you just need it to be accurate enough that you can recognize your ideas.

Once you have your text transcript, your next step is up to you: maybe you’re exporting your transcript as a Word doc and revising from there. Maybe you’re firing up your voice recorder again to dictate a more polished take. Maybe only a few words in your audio journey are worth keeping — but that’s fine too. It probably didn’t cost you much (and good news: the price for this tech will continue to fall in the years ahead).

A few more tips:

• Use a recorder/app that you trust. Losing a recording is painful — and the anxiety of losing another can derail your most exciting creative moments (“I hope this recorder is working. Good, it is... @#*! where was I?”)

• Audio quality matters when it comes to automatic transcription. If your recording has a lot of background noise or you’re speaking far away from the mic, the accuracy is going to drop. Consider using earbuds (better yet: Airpods) so you can worry less about where you’re holding the recorder.

• Find a comfortable space. Eventually you may get used to having people overhear your musings, but it’s a lot easier to let your mind “go for a walk” when you’re comfortable in your environment.

• Speaking of walking: why not go for a stroll? The pains of writing can have just as much to do with being stationary and hunched over. Walking gets your blood flowing — and your ideas too.

• I have a lot of ideas, good and bad, while I’m thinking out loud and playing music at the same time (in my case, guitar — but I suspect it applies more broadly). There’s something about playing the same four-chord song on auto pilot for the thousandth time that keeps my hands busy and leaves my mind free to wander.

The old ways of doing things — whether it’s with a keyboard or pen — still have their advantages. Putting words to a page can force a sort of linear thinking that is otherwise difficult to maintain. And when it comes to editing, it’s no contest: QWERTY or bust.

But for getting those first crucial paragraphs down (and maybe a few keystone ideas to build towards)? Consider talking to yourself. Even if you wind up with a transcript full of nothing but profanity — well, have you ever seen a transcript full of profanity? You could do a lot worse.

Minimizing The Stress And Strain Of Being A Writer

Oh, woe, being a writer is truly the toughest job of them. Okay, so that might not be true. Compared to the majority of workers, we might have things fairly cushy. However, that doesn’t mean that the stresses writers face on the job shouldn’t be taken seriously. They can get in the way of your productivity, affecting your ability to make a living and, even more crucially, can cause real injury if you’re not careful. Let’s look at a few tips to ensure you stay safe and sane when writing in your den.

Ensure that you have a comfy office

Writing involves spending a lot of time sitting in one place with your hands at a keyboard, type, type, typing away. If that’s not a recipe for repetitive strain injury, then nothing else is.

The first tip is to make sure that your office supports and comforts you, reducing the physical strain that tends to build up in your shoulders and lower back when you work for a long time. A comfortable chair, one that supports these parts of your body, and allows you to adjust the height to make sure that you’re adopting good sitting posture is a must. Here’s what I use. Otherwise, you might actually want to get a standing desk to avoid the issues of sitting too much in the first place.

Get up and stretch

Even if you do have a great ergonomic chair, you should take the time to get up and stretch your legs every hour. Even if you have a standing desk, you should shake out your body and move around a little.

For writers, it’s particularly important to do wrist stretches to make sure that you’re taking care of the parts of your body that are most likely to suffer from RSIs in the first place. One good stretch is to slowly raise your palms to the air with your arms held directly upwards for ten seconds, before slowly lowering them. Then you hold your arms by your side, holding your hands so that the back of them points to the ground for ten minutes, repeating this until you do ten of each stretch. Here are some ideas:

Work in good lighting

Aside from spending their day sitting in front of a keyboard, writers also spend a lot of time with their eyes glued to a computer monitor. Direct contact with blue light can affect you in a range of ways. For one, it can cause eyestrain, which can be stinging and annoying. It can also affect your sleep if you’re working at night. Windows allows you to switch from blue to yellow light on your monitor. Just go into Settings > Display > Night Light. Toggle on the Night Light setting and schedule when the blue light will turn off. I have mine set so that the blue light turns off at sunset.

You can also use glasses that have blue light filters, and you might want to choose a shop that offers free shipping as you might want to get more than one pair for safety. You need your eyes to see what you’re writing, so they’re 98worth protecting.

Know how to position your wrists

Enough keyboarding and mousing can lead to some pretty nasty injuries and conditions, with carpal tunnel able to effectively end your writing career if it gets bad enough. However, computer use doesn’t have to lead to such nasty injuries if you take care of yourself.

Make sure your chair is positioned so that your hands are raised just above the level of the keyboard but below the level of your elbows. You shouldn’t be reaching up to type at the keyboard, nor should you be typing at any angle other than straight, if you can help it. Also, keep your wrist straight when using your mouse.

Know your limits

Because of the intensive nature of the work, writers can get into some pretty unhealthy patterns (like skipping meals) in order to get those 5,000 words a day (or however many it is) out there. For one, it’s important to set realistic expectations for how much you can reasonably write in one workday, make sure that your getting paid a decent rate per word, and try not to push your limits. Burnout is a very real risk. If a writing piece involves a lot of research, then be sure to include that time in your calculations, as it counts as work all the same, even if it doesn’t involve any typing.

Choose a time that best fits you

A lot of writers end up being night owls, for some reason. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with this if it is truly when you’re at your most productive. Just make sure you’re negating the risk of eyestrain and sleep disruption and it can work fine. However, if you end up working late due to procrastination more than anything, you should make an effort to try scheduling out different writing times to see what works best for you.

Having a pre-work preparation ritual, such as getting dressed, eating breakfast, and taking a walk might be able to help you better switch on your “work mode” at any time of the day. Stick to your most productive time once you find it.

Know when to take breaks


Due to the intensive nature of professional writing, it’s easy for stress to build up, especially if you’re writing to a deadline. Burnout is a real risk that you should stay keenly aware of. You should make sure to schedule breaks to allow yourself to breathe, be it at certain times or whenever you hit a certain word count. Be willing to take impromptu breaks, as well. If you start to feel yourself getting distracted or you feel like your head is starting to get too fussy, then you should take a break, get away from the computer, and take a moment to breathe or even to chat to someone.

With the tips above, you can ensure that you’re able to fire off thousands of words without worry of getting burnt out or of doing real injury to yourself.