How To Never Run Out Of Online Writing Topics

Is your idea bank empty?

If you haven’t found your niche or aren’t selling something, ideas can be scarce. You have too many options (you can write about anything) and not enough obvious ones (the 10 ways to slice and dice a topic).

So much noise, yet so little signal in your brain.

MacArthur “genius” award recipient, cartoonist, and creativity maven Lynda Barry has a perfect technique to keep your creativity tank full. She keeps journals in composition books.

Each page is broken into quadrants:

1) List what you did that day

2) List what you saw

3) List what you overheard

4) Draw something

Take the photo of the squirrel above. Listing today’s walk reminds me of the squirrel. What was I thinking/seeing/doing at the time? I could write about the squirrel superhighway and how nature uses man-made things.

I could write about taking the picture and how it took many shots to get one good one which becomes a meditation on persistence, patience, or reps.

I could also write about any other thought/memory/artwork triggered by a squirrel.

You see how it works? By just recapping your day in bullet points you are forced to remember both the mundane and the unusual.

Stopping to notice what you saw forces you to ask why it was memorable. Why did it resonate with you? The killer combo of pause and question will lead to interesting discoveries, and we get excited when we discover something. When we’re excited we want to share our excitement with others. And voila! A newly minted idea to write about.

What you ponder become the ideas in the tank. It’s not just a formatting game of squirrel topics. I’m not suggesting you take the squirrels and turn them into listicles, or how-tos or squirrel quotes. It’s what ELSE the squirrel made you think of, that turns your creativity crank.

What you write about is a window into the you that we want to connect with. Tell us your story, show us how you think, or makes us feel what you feel. We’re waiting for you with open arms.

Highly recommend “Syllabus — Notes From an Accidental Professor” by Lynda Barry

Photo credit: Mariko Gordon