Writing Tips

How To Never Run Out Of Online Writing Topics

High-wire Squirrel by Mariko O. Gordon

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.