Are you one of those people who has absolutely no trouble discussing things with other people; but as soon as you sit down in front of a PC or tablet, your mind goes as blank as the screen?

This poses a real challenge in today’s business world, since creating content (whether speeches, blog posts, or presentations, etc.) is a vitally important responsibility.

Whether you speak it or publish it online or in print, this is a crucial way to get your message out there. The goal is to gain what I call positive visibility, in other words, communicating effectively in order to attract your ideal clients and increase your business and income as well.

Even if you always got red marks all over your papers in school and are sure that writing is not in your skill set, do not despair! There is hope for you.

Here are a few reasons why writing may be such a challenge, and some strategies to deal with those challenges.

1. When you sit down to write, do you try to start at the beginning with the first sentence and write right through to the end? Actually, the opening sentence is often one of the hardest sentences to write. In these days, blessed with the glories and convenience of cut and paste, just start anywhere, with whatever pops into your head, and then edit and rearrange your thoughts once you have gotten them out of your head and into the document.

2. Do you feel like you have no clue what to write? That means that you are not taking advantage of my strategy of letting your subconscious mind write most of your copy for you. (See my blog post on how to do this here.)

3. Do you try to make your writing perfect the first time around? This not only slows you down to a virtual crawl (or stops you altogether), it is virtually impossible to accomplish. To quote writer and writing teacher, Anne Lamott, you need to write what she calls (and please pardon the vulgarity) a shitty first draft.

4. Do you try to write long pieces all at once? This is definitely a situation where you need to divide the writing up into manageable amounts or you will be tempted never to even get started.

Do you remember the old riddle about how you eat an elephant? The answer is one bite at a time. Divide any big writing job into smaller and more doable chunks.

Any time you bite off a bigger writing assignment than you can chew, you are setting yourself up either for failure to finish; or, even more likely, failure to start because the job seems so overwhelming.

Creating effective messages that can attract your ideal clients and build your business and income is a very important skill to cultivate. It is a skill that you can acquire with a judicious combination of coaching, determination, practice, and being open to receiving the many gifts available to you from your subconscious mind..

Which of these strategies that I have shared above do you feel will be most helpful to you in upgrading your own writing skills?