3 Tips for Smashing Writer’s Block

Ever have a project that seems to just drag on and on and on…

That’s me right now with this sales page I’m writing.

Part of the problem is that I know there’s a lot riding on this project. The sales page is for my business partner John Sonmez’s flagship course, and if nail this copy it could potentially double our product revenue.

The last sales funnel I created for one of his products is converting at something like 6-8% of email subscribers into buyers, which I’m thrilled with.

So I’m putting a TON of pressure on myself to hit another home run.

Another factor here is the product itself. I always go through the product multiple times before I write the copy, and this product contains about 7 hours of video and 200+ pages of written content.

Lots to absorb, and lots to cover in the sales page.

Right now my draft is sitting at just under 10,000 words.

Yikes. That’s basically a novella.

I’ve been working on this off and on for the last couple of months, and finally last week I decided it was high time to shove this thing over the finish line.

I’m using a combination of three different tactics to make that happen.

1. Set an external deadline.

I’ve found that deadlines I set for myself don’t really motivate me. When I make a commitment to someone else, I always manage to hit it.

(These emails are a great example—I haven’t missed a day in nearly 9 months.)

So I promised John I’d have a draft done by Friday.

2. Break the work down into tiny chunks.

I use a standard outline for the sales pages I write—I always include a set of 10-12 different sections.

I had placeholders for all these sections in my draft document, but I didn’t have a good sense for which ones I’d completed.

So I spent 30 minutes going through my draft and making tasks in my to-do app (I use OmniFocus) for each chunk that wasn’t finished yet.

(Amusing side note: Sometimes the most productive work you can do feels like procrastination. Scrolling through my draft and making tasks totally felt like screwing off, but it was the best time I spent all week.)

Now I could clearly see at a glance which pieces of the page weren’t finished yet.

3. Commit to daily goals. Every morning I look at this list of unfinished sections and decide which pieces I’m committing to finish that day.

For example, yesterday I decided to write the descriptions and bullet points for the bonuses we’re including with the course. I’ve been putting this off, because it meant going through 11 different different video interviews. (I’m a writer. I HATE video.)

But since I had committed to drafting the bonus section yesterday, I powered through and got it done.

What makes the daily goals work for me is the final deadline. I know I have to make measurable progress each day to be done by Friday, and that makes the daily goals “real.”

None of this guarantees that my sales page will be a home run.

But it does ensure that I’ll actually finish it—and that’s a huge win on a project this big.

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