Winning Strategies for Power Presentations: Jerry Weissman Delivers Lessons from the World’s Best Presenters

13. Writer’s Block II

Easier Said Than Done

The step-by-step process to get past the proverbial blank page of the previous chapter is as applicable to presenters as it is to writers. Another method to break through the mental barricade is to just start talking.

Writers have long known that speaking aloud what they have written in silence helps them to shape their ideas. In a Wired Magazine article on voice recognition, Clive Thompson tells of sixteenth- century French essayist Michel de Montaigne and nineteenth century American writer Henry James, both of whom wrote by dictating their work to their secretaries. Moving to the present, Mr. Thompson cites the example of writer and critic Tim Carmody who “found himself staring at an empty page, not ...