In the search for story-worthy ideas, most writers are sidelined by occasional bouts of creative myopia. When it sets in—when your field of inspiration narrows—it’s easy to convince yourself that your luck has run out and all the good ideas are taken. But finding exceptional writing ideas isn’t a matter of luck. Waiting passively for creativity to strike won’t put words on the page, either. The secret to cultivating writing inspiration is to go out and hunt it down—in unexpected places.
“Curiosity, attention, a little bravado, and a willingness to break routines lead to great writing ideas,” says writing coach Don Fry. “You lurk, listen, ask questions, and find experts. You can prowl the Internet, but the best writing ideas come from face to face interaction with people.”
He offers these great writing tips and more from his new book Writing Your Way (Writer’s Digest Books):
6 Surprising Ways to Find Writing Ideas
“The best ideas are subjects that other writers haven’t written about, or haven’t noticed. The following writing techniques work because they dynamite you out of your routine ways of thinking and dealing with the world. They make the world ‘strange’ so you can see it fresh.
1. Explain Common Things
Ask experts to explain how ordinary things work, preferably things invisible to the public. For example, how does your town’s water-purification system work? What happens to recycled plastic? How do wine aerators work? What do lifeguards look for? What makes chocolate taste good?
2. Mine Your Emotions
If something bothers or puzzles you, find out why by interviewing people with similar reactions. You’ll discover you’re not alone in never changing your passwords, buying lottery tickets, or your fear of high bridges. I’ve always wondered if my parents are really my parents, which turns out to be a fairly common doubt.
3. Follow Alternative Paths
Take alternate routes to your normal destinations, and try out different types of transportation, especially slower ones that let you see more. Leave your car at home and walk to work, or ride a bike. Climb stairs instead of taking elevators, take the service elevator, or enter through back doors.
4. Cultivate Weirdos
Your mother taught you never to talk with strangers. Good advice for children, bad advice for writers. Strike up conversations with people you don’t know, even cultivating weirdos. Introduce yourself to airplane seatmates, to people carrying a sign or wearing a name tag.
5. Lower Your Standards
Accept any piece of paper handed to you on the street. Read junk mail. Watch awful TV shows and ask why they appeal to anyone. Buy TV gadget offers, test them, and try to get your money back.
6. Make Yourself Into Somebody Else
Role-play the lives of people with viewpoints different from yours or your readers’. I once spent half a day in a wheelchair and learned about hazards I never imagined. Bob Graham, the former governor of Florida, did manual labor one day a month to understand the public.
All of these writing techniques jar you out of your normal vision, because that’s where the writing ideas are, invisible in plain sight.”
Purchase a copy of Writing Your Way from WritersDigestShop.com
Thinking of self-publishing? Find out how Abbott Press (a division of Writer’s Digest) can help you achieve your goals.
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If you’d like to quickly amass content for a book—without the pressure of actually having to work on one—consider blogging a book. Blogging is a fast and simple way to generate a body of targeted content and build your platform, which are key components of landing a book deal in today’s competitive marketplace.
When writing blog posts with the intention of creating a blogged book, be sure to:
- Develop each post as a stand-alone unit with a beginning, middle and end so readers can “pick up” your book at any point;
- Create flow from one post to the next by teasing readers to keep “turning pages”;
- Link related posts to form a cohesive body of work.
In addition to creating cohesive and relevant content (as noted above), optimizing your blog, and utilizing best SEO practices, it’s important to write with passion in an authentic voice, says author and expert blogger Nina Amir in How to Blog a Book (Writer’s Digest Books, 2012):
“Successful blogs have at their helms bloggers who write with passion and purpose, who feel inspired and who every day show up as nothing less than their true selves with all their colors flying,” says Amir. “Almost every blogger I interviewed (for the book) who landed a book deal attributed his or her success to feeling passionate about the subject of the blog and being authentic while blogging. If you feel the need for inspiration, read their blogs.”
Here are more blogging tips from the book to inspire you:
Top 10 Blogging Tips for Blogging a Book
- Read other blogs on your topic—and comment on them.
- Get involved in groups and forums on your subject.
- Read books on your topic.
- Set up Google Alerts on your topic or on additional keywords related to your topic (and be sure to open the alerts and read the pertinent posts).
- Ask some experts to write guest blog posts for you so you get a break.
- Take a brief blogging vacation (tell your readers you are, in fact, on vacation for two or three days).
- Do research on your topic.
- Talk to other people who are interested in your topic or who are experts in your subject area.
- Explore the possibility of using multimedia on your blog—audio and video.
- Interview experts in your subject area and post the information or the interview; you can even post it as an audio clip, podcast, or video.
Purchase How to Blog a Book.
Purchase the “Creating an Author Blog” on-demand webinar taught by literary agent Meredith Barnes.
Learn how to start a blog. Register for Blogging 101 workshop with Dan Blank.
Joe Ponzio on Going from Blog to Book: F Wall Street
Although Joe Ponzio started his blog to draw platform to the book he was planning to write (not necessarily blog), like many blog-to-book success stories he feels “ the book and the blog go hand-in-hand.” In the case of Fwallstreet.com, both the blog and the subsequent book, F Wall Street, Joe Ponzio’s No-Nonsense Approach to Value Investing for the Rest of Us, focus on explaining common sense, long-term value investing in plain English.
“Readers understand one better if they also read the other,” says Ponzio. “Both have separate content, but there is a small amount of duplication. I’d say that 90 percent of the website is completely new, original content, which is crucial because readers come back to your site looking for more answers, more explanations, and those tidbits that your editor cut out but that you felt were important.”
Adams Media released F Wall Street in June 2009.
1. Why did you begin blogging?
I launched FWallStreet.com in June of 2007 to accompany the book. I had written a majority of the book at that point, though I didn’t yet have a publisher, and wanted to have an online resource for people to visit and host discussions after reading the book.
I didn’t plan on advertising the website or letting the world know it was out there until the book was published. Still, the website took off. By the end of 2007, just six months after its initial launch, FWallStreet.com had more than one million hits.
2. How did you choose your topic?
The book actually started as a “how-to” guide for my children, then three and soon-to-be-born. It was a simple, 80-page manual on how to think about investing for the long-term and how to evaluate companies and stocks.
I chose investing because that’s what I do for a living. It’s what I’m passionate about. And there is so much bad information out there that only a small percentage of the population ever hear about, learn about, and stick with value investing. I wanted to make sure that my children would be in that select group if I wasn’t around to teach them personally.
3. What, if any, market research did you do before beginning your blog?
None. I didn’t think that hard about it when I started, and I figured my blog would be lost in the sea of constantly-updated, keyword-rich, go-go-go stock market blogs. Readers ended up visiting FWallStreet.com, became curious by the design, and stayed for the content. And…they told their friends about it! Most of my early visitors did not come from link exchanges or advertising (I did none) but from emails from other visitors. People would see FWallStreet.com, email it to a friend, and voila!―another visitor.
One thing I learned over time is that content truly is king. If you produce good content, people will want to come and read it. The only way to produce good content is to blog about something you love.
My advice to aspiring bloggers: Stick with topics you truly know and about which you are passionate, and catch the visitors right away with a good design. Content is king, but you have to present it (via a solid design) in a way that makes them want to meet the king.
4. Did you think you were writing a book, did you plan on blogging a book, or were you simply blogging on your topic? (In retrospect, would doing one or the other have made it easier to later write your book?)
I knew I was writing a book. Rather, I had written a book and knew that the blog was a key part of supporting the book if it were to get picked up by a publisher.
In retrospect, I would have done things the exact same way. I would have written the book (or a majority of it) and then
