On her Write Ideas Marketing Blog, marketing coach Andrea Morris has an interesting idea for how to overcome blocking your more extreme and interesting ideas:
"I’ve discovered a secret during my career as a copywriter and marketing coach. Toning ideas down is a heck of a lot easier than jazzing them up.
My first few projects started from a logical point of view. I wrote and edited at the same time as most people do. The words were acceptable, but they lacked that certain je-ne-sais-quoi. It needed some sparkle - but adding sparkle to swill isn’t easy.
One day I decided to give my thinking a makeover. I set a goal to find all the outrageous ideas lurking in the far corners of my brain and get them out of my head and onto my computer screen.
I decorated a piece of card stock with silly symbols and the words “JUST THINK” and covered my computer screen. Somehow the paper removed the tiny editor that sat somewhere in my head trashing ideas before they even got to the screen. Since I couldn’t see my work, all my crazy ideas (not just the logical ones) made the journey from my brain, through my fingers and onto the computer.
The result? I discovered many of the ideas that normally wouldn’t have made the cut were more effective than the so-called logical ideas. With a little tweaking and toning down I had writing that worked. The process also saved me time and was fun to boot."
I also have a strategy you might want to try: on one or two sheets of paper, write the numbers one through fifty down the left hand side. Set a kitchen timer for five minutes. Then, in that five minutes, write down as many ideas as possible (your goal is 50) about whatever you want to write. The time pressure tends to shut down or distract the inner critic. Later you can go over the ideas and pick out the best ones.
