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Hemingway called the blank page “The White Bull”. It both terrified and excited him. A world of opportunity, in an expanse of nothing.
You might feel the same way when you sit down to write a case study. All that white space suddenly feels enormous. So you delay. Deliberate. You wait for a moment of divine inspiration. And when it doesn’t strike, the fear of failure becomes all too real.
Start small
In most cases, all it takes to break through the jam is to make a mark; a word, a thought, a phrase. Anything.
Suddenly, you’re no longer staring at the blank page.
Focus on the story
“People who think well, write well. Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.” — David Ogilvy.
Once you're over that first mental block, give yourself time to really think about the story you want to tell. Why should the audience care? And how much do they need to know?
From there, you can list the key talking points. Like a drawing or sketch, you don’t need to write each sentence in 100% detail from start to finish. You can go back and fill in the details as your thoughts evolve. You might even scrap some of them.
The writing process itself will help you form the story—and it might end up nothing like your original outline. That’s fine.
Taunt the bull
Starting small with these prompts helps avoid kitchen sink syndrome.
When you haven’t thought about what you want to say, you’ll either get discouraged and never write anything at all, or you overwhelm the reader with a disorganised stream of consciousness that no one can keep up with.
In both cases, the end result is the same: you say nothing, and the thought of doing it all again tomorrow becomes even more difficult.
So taunt the bull. Make that mark.
