How to Come up with Unlimited Article Ideas
If you are a writer or blogger you have probably struggled at some point to come up with ideas for topics to write about. At some point you may have had the lofty goal of writing an article every single day, maybe even multiple articles every day. Even if you prefer to only write one or two articles a week you've probably experienced the frustration of being stuck for ideas, for this experience is almost ubiquitous amongst writers. This can hit exceptionally hard for those of us that strive for a high volume of output (while hopefully maintaining a high standard). Fortunately there seems to be a very effective way to keep your pen moving or your word processor humming. All it requires is a subtle shift in our objective.
For those of us wanting to make money from our writing, logic dictates that the more we write, the more potential we have for earnings. Or the more potential we have to build our reputations and portfolios. Whatever our objective is, it is likely that we will meet it more quickly by writing a lot than a little. Unfortunately this leads to placing a lot of psychological pressure on ourselves to "perform," which is detrimental to the creative process, and we may very well end up suffering from writer's block. We can circumvent this by changing our objective from that of "what can I produce?" to "what have I learned?"
This approach immediately makes all of our experiences potential topics to write about. The things that we have learned are things that undoubtedly have potential value to a reader, if we are able to convey the lesson. If we focus on our own learning, our writing can be a synthesis of the knowledge we have gained. I think this is what most of us tried to do with our writing anyway, but now we are making it our foremost goal, instead of something that we happen to do along the way.
Also, teaching is a powerful learning tool in and of itself. If we take what we have learned and can pass that along to the reader, we have solidified that knowledge in our minds and truly made it our own. This will create a sort of snowball effect, the more we learn the more things we will have to say as we can juxtapose and combine different pieces of knowledge.
So the next time you are struggling for an article idea think to yourself not "what can I write?" but "what would I like to learn?" By answering this question you will often find that the writing takes care of itself.
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great point of view on coming up with article ideas. Great article!
Thanks Sookie!
Excellent article. This is what I do, but have not verbalised it in quite this way, until mow. Your article will help ME a lot and I thank you.
The older you are the more experiences you have to draw on and write about as well. Dont tell your kids that you know everything though, because they think they know it all and we know nothing.
Great ideas
Good points. As long as we read the newspaper, we can learn things, and write about new discoveries or new events.
Great advice. That's a really good way to think of your writings. It is learning after all. We learn something and share it.
Thanks BA friend. Learning & sharing is a great way to go
This is great tip. I used it all the time in fact. I write about things that I want to learn in my articles. Thanks for the insight
awesome article... I like the idea of asking myself "what do I want to learn?" In this way, I can spend my time learning about my favorite topics and then sharing this new knowledge with my readers
Ever since i opted to write memos for my office mates, they advice me to learn or read quick guides on how to write online but was prevented by my job as an officer of the law in my country. Now that I've retired from the service i will surely take note of what you said about you and how you started writing. who knows i might become another DKRunner....
Thanks AJ, this is great stuff and very helpful.
Nice article, AJ, I like your approach to writing. I agree that if we pass on to what we have learnt overtime, those justifies out hard work. It also gives a feeling of sharing someone with value through you own mistakes. Well done !
wow really great article, even for a new Info Barrel writer. If that barrier will some day arrive I hope that by asking what would I like to learn, I will be able to come up with great article ideas!
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