Writing is a creative act, whether you’re writing creatively or not. Even when you’re writing professionally, there’s still this nagging sensation in the back of your mind, telling you that you can only write when you’re feeling inspired.

And if you aren’t feeling inspired, that means you have “writer’s block” — an unbeatable, unavoidable part of any writer’s life. When I was in college, I spent many afternoons staring blankly at my computer screen for hours, throwing my hands up in frustration when I finally decided to give up and watch Netflix.

Then I started writing for a living. It changed things pretty drastically.

Here’s the thing — if I want to get paid, I can’t have writer’s block. I can’t give up and watch Netflix, because then my clients won’t want to keep hiring me, and that means I won’t have a job. I have to write every day, and the writing always has to be good enough to deliver by the time the client wants it.

How do I manage that?

Always Have a Deadline

I don’t care if my client says, “Just have it to me whenever!” I don’t even care if the writing isn’t related to work. I always make sure I have a deadline, whether it’s self-imposed or not.

Let’s use this blog post as an example. There is no one forcing me to write these blogs. But I’ve decided to post to it twice a month, and I’m dedicated to that.

I set Wednesday, August 9, as the due date for this particular blog. I have it written down in my planner, in fact, so I can’t put it off by telling myself that I really meant to make it due on Friday. (Again, drawing from my college days here. It’s amazing the ways you can trick yourself into putting off work when you’re a lazy undergrad.)

Client-set due dates work even better than personal ones, of course. You’ll always be more motivated to do something if you have someone else holding you accountable, especially if that someone is paying for your services. But in time, I’ve managed to transfer that feeling of urgency to personal projects like this one, as well.

Draft the Project Before Your Deadline

Here’s the thing that usually tripped me up in college. In case it wasn’t obvious by now, I considered myself a master of procrastination. When a professor told me that an assignment couldn’t be started the day it was due, I took it as a personal challenge.

Thankfully, my work ethic has changed remarkably for the better.

These days, I always start my projects early. In the case of this blog, I wrote the first draft on Monday. And starting early gave me the perfect weapon to fight writer’s block. When it crept in, telling me that I didn’t know what to write, I had the perfect response — “It doesn’t matter if I don’t know what to write, as long as I write something!”

Once you take this approach, you’ll be able to write through a block with relative ease. The writing might not be good, but that’s okay because by starting early, you give yourself the time to make it good.

Revision is Your Friend

When I drafted this blog on Monday, it was nowhere near publication-worthy. Each subheading only had a few sentences under it. The sentence structure was clunky and awkward. The basic thoughts were there, but they weren’t fleshed out at all.

I knew none of that mattered because I had time.

On Tuesday, I went through and cleaned it up — adding detail, explaining myself better, fixing flow and tense issues. And on Wednesday, I uploaded the blog into WordPress and took a crack at it again, polishing and revising some more.

(Pro-tip: Seeing your article in a different format can help you catch the mistakes you didn’t before. If you don’t plan on posting it anywhere, you can at least change the font and give it another read-through.)

Revision is where the magic happens. Once I had my ideas down, it was harder for writer’s block to tell me that I didn’t know what to write. “What to write” was right in front of me! I just had to clean it up and make it into something that was actually fun to read.

Talking about my revision process can only do so much, of course. So to give you an idea of what my revision process looks like, I uploaded Monday and Tuesday’s drafts of this article here!

What Do You Do During a Timecrunch?

Of course, for this particular example, I stretched the work out over a couple of days. But on my about page, I say that my average turnaround time is only 24 hours. How does that work?

The short answer is simple: I follow this exact same pattern, but I shrink it to fit whatever time frame I have.

Sometimes I’ll write an article, stand up, walk around the house a few times, pet the cat. And then 15 minutes later, I’ll go back to the computer and edit it into submission.

Now, obviously, the more time I have with an article, the more times I’ll be able to edit it. But even if I’m only spending a bit of time with it, the process still works, because it’s based on the same principle no matter how much time I have: The writing doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be done. Perfect comes later.

This philosophy is the best way to beat writer’s block that I know.