How to beat writer's block by talking it out

You know what you want to say. You’ve probably said it out loud to a friend already. But the moment you open a blank document, it’s gone.

Writer’s block is rarely about having nothing to say. More often it’s about trying to do two jobs at once: figuring out what you think and writing it well. Talking separates those jobs. You think out loud first, messily, and edit afterwards.

Here’s a simple way to do it.

Why talking gets you unstuck

When you talk, you don’t stop to reread your last sentence. You don’t delete and retype. You just keep going, the way you would explaining something to a friend. That momentum is exactly what a blank page takes away.

Talking also changes your tone for the better. Spoken explanations tend to be direct and concrete (“basically, the problem is…”), which is often what good writing is trying to sound like anyway.

The speak-then-edit method

1. Explain it to someone, out loud

Pick a real or imaginary listener: a colleague, a friend, your future reader. Then explain the thing you’re trying to write, out loud, for two to five minutes. Record it.

Don’t aim for good sentences. Aim for complete thoughts. If you lose your way, say so (“okay, wait, the real point is…”) and keep going.

2. Answer three questions while you talk

If you’re not sure where to start, talk through these:

• What’s the one thing I want the reader to know or do?
• Why should they care?
• What’s the example or story that makes it real?

Those three answers are the skeleton of almost any email, post or essay.

3. Turn the recording into text

Get the words out of the recording. You can use a transcript (the iPhone’s Voice Memos app makes one automatically on recent versions) or dictate straight into a document.

Or use an app that turns the ramble into a first draft for you. Gabbly writes a clean note from what you said, then can rewrite it as an email, a summary, a post or a style you describe. The original transcript stays alongside, so you can pull back any phrasing you liked.

4. Edit like an editor, not a writer

Now you have words on the page, and editing is much easier than writing:

• Find your best sentence and move it to the top.
• Cut the warm-up. Spoken drafts often take a while to get going, and the real start is usually a few lines in.
• Keep the phrases that sound like you. That natural voice is the advantage of starting out loud.
• Read it aloud once more. If you stumble, the reader will too.

Use it for anything

• Emails you’ve been putting off: “Here’s what I need to tell them and why it matters.” Talk it, send the cleaned-up version.
• Reports and updates: walk through what happened, what’s next and what you need, in that order.
• Essays and blog posts: record yourself explaining the idea to a friend, then shape the transcript into sections.
• Social posts: say the story the way you’d tell it at dinner. The best posts sound like that anyway.

A few tips

• Go for a walk. Movement helps a lot of people think, and you don’t need a desk to talk.
• Set a timer. Five minutes is enough to get unstuck. Stop while you still have momentum.
• Talk past the stuck part. If you hit a gap, say “I’m not sure about this bit yet” and move on. Gaps are easier to fill once the rest exists.
• Don’t edit while talking. Every time you stop to fix a sentence, you’re back to writing.

Next time the page stays blank, close the document and say it out loud instead.

Join the Gabbly waitlist to turn your rambles into first drafts on iPhone.