What kind of snack will beat writer’s block you ask? After all, we’ve all tried chocolate, biscuits, crisps, and endless pots of tea to no avail. The snack we’re after is snack writing. Sorry if you were hoping for a magical brownie recipe.

What is snack writing?

Snack writing, as opposed to binge writing, is a short writing session. When we snack write regularly, we tend not to experience writer’s block.

This is similar to eating snacks. When you eat little and often, you don’t become ravenously hungry or get headaches caused by low blood sugar or any of the other nasty things that being overly hungry can cause.

When you develop the habit of writing little and often, you keep your writing on an even keel.

How does snack writing help?

The number one cause of writer’s block is that overly critical voice in your head. Snack writing keeps it quiet.

It starts to work immediately. When you sit down to write for ten minutes, it’s easy to tell the voice to hush for a bit because it doesn’t believe you’re going to publish anything you write in such a short space of time.

It works better as you go on. When you develop a habit of snack writing, your voice gets used to keeping quiet. See, as annoying as that voice is, it’s really only trying to protect you. Once it sees that you can write for a few minutes without its input and nothing bad happens, it will trust you to carry on.

After all, that voice doesn’t get in the way of you doing any other mundane, routine things like cleaning your teeth, making a cuppa, or taking out the bins, does it? Once writing is a habit, it will be as stress free as those other things you do all the time without stress.

How can you develop the snack writing habit?

Set a goal and track it! Download your free writing tracker. As with any other habit–engaging in it will make you want more of it, so get writing! Make this even more powerful by combining it with the advice Sarah Boak gives in “The Healthy Writer“.