Where to Find Ideas to Write About
We’ve talked before about the frustration of staring at a blank page. It’s a daunting challenge for someone to sit down and write without knowing what they’re going to write about. The good news is that you are literally surrounded by hundreds of ideas to write about, you’re just not aware of them. Here are a few great ways to find writing ideas.
Explain Everyday Things That People Wonder About
Remember when you were a kid and filled with wonder as you discovered how and why things worked the way they did? Go back to that mindset when you’re looking for ideas to write about. Look at every day things and explain how they work. If you have kids, you can even use them for great ideas. Write an article that explains in simple language how a plane is able to fly, or what lifeguards are watching for while sitting on their stands, or how plastic gets recycled and turned into new containers. The list is endless.
Pay Attention to Your Mind
If you start paying attention to some of the things that run through your mind, you will be full of ideas of ideas to write about. Write down your random thoughts and then do some research about them or talk to other people to see if they wonder about the same things. A few examples are being afraid of heights, knowing you should change your passwords but never doing it, or wondering why dogs always sniff each other when they meet.
Take an Alternate Route
Most people are creatures of habit, but that means you’re stopping yourself from being exposed to different things that might make a great subject for your next article. Try taking a different route to work and see if something interesting pops up. Maybe you could take the stairs instead of the elevator or even ride your bike to work. If you do something different, you are bound to see or experience something new that you find interesting enough to write about.
Talk to Strangers
Your mother was right. You shouldn’t talk to strangers… when you’re a kid. However, when you’re grown up, you can have all kinds of interesting conversations with strangers. Those conversations will probably give you many interesting ideas to write about.
Don’t Ignore the Bad Stuff
Most people try to avoid reading junk mail and watching crappy tv. However, when you’re looking for ideas of things to write about, those can be gold mines. This is similar in nature to the point above about taking a different path. Watch some tv shows you’ve never seen before. Glance through your junk mail, both from your mailbox and your email. Check out some of the gadgets shown on the home shopping channels. All of these types of things will expose you to something new and different, and that helps you come up with new ideas to write about.
Be Someone Else
When you’re really trying to find new ideas of things to write about, try to “be someone else” for a day. Spend a day in a wheelchair, do a job shadow for a profession that looks interesting – if you are an office worker, find a way to spend a day doing manual labor. If you do manual labor, spend a day at the office. All of these will give you a new experience to write about, but more importantly, they will open you up to new perspectives that will probably give you dozens of new ideas to to write about.
Now you know how to acquire a nearly endless list of ideas for writing, so it’s time to get to work. Finding something to write about is the first step. Writing it is the second step. Running it through a good online spell check program is the last step. If you skip this step, you are likely to have mistakes in your writing that make you either look unprofessional, or as though you don’t care enough to spell things correctly. Neither option is a good one!
