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.
Comments
2010-07-28 8:25pm PDT
great point of view on coming up with article ideas. Great article!
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2010-07-29 2:11pm PDT
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.
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2010-08-02 11:02am PDT
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
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2010-09-29 10:29pm PDT
Good points. As long as we read the newspaper, we can learn things, and write about new discoveries or new events.
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2011-01-26 12:30pm PST
Great advice. That's a really good way to think of your writings. It is learning after all. We learn something and share it.
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2011-01-26 1:01pm PST
Thanks BA friend. Learning & sharing is a great way to go
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2011-11-08 5:15am PST
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
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2011-11-09 5:02pm PST
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
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2011-11-13 8:28am PST
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....
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2011-12-07 10:25pm PST
Thanks AJ, this is great stuff and very helpful.
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2011-12-25 8:32am PST
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 !
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2012-02-09 3:04am PST
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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2012-04-25 9:53pm PDT
I like your idea of thinking of something we have learned and writing about it. Thanks!
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2012-05-24 6:09am PDT
Nice tips here to come up with unlimited article ideas.Thanks.
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2012-06-18 9:37am PDT
I think one of the reasons we have problems is so that later we can help someone else with the same problem. That ties in with writing about what we have learned. Of course, we can also write about other things we have learned such as how to cook, crochet, give a talk, save money, assemble a bicycle, etc. Thanks for the article.