How to create new ideas for writing your own blog

How to create new ideas for writing your own blogYou have decided to write a blog.

Your goal is to write one article each week for a year.

It’s a good goal. The benefits are many, such as:

  • Content for your website (Google loves this)
  • Your thoughts become clear
  • You will have enough information for your first book
  • You build credibility in your field
  • You will find your own voice

Great discipline this writing stuff.

Week one goes well. Week two is okay. Week three is your best yet. Week four……. what do you write about?

You know your stuff, you just don’t want to parrot everyone else in your field – if you’re not careful you will contradict the fifth important benefit on the list. Tony Robbins once remarked, “If you write one more time you will scream.”

So how do you come up with new ideas on a regular basis?

New ideas for blogs on tap

To be clear the topics do not need to be new, however, the way you convey them does.

Let’s explore ways to do this, for example:

  • Brainstorm ideas
  • Read books
  • Listen to audio
  • Watch TV, go to a show, museum or a puppet show

What do all these things have in common? They all provide a different input that will stimulate and trigger your brain. It is accepted that the brain works via association and you just don’t know how any one piece of information will affect your ideas.

How would ‘Learning how to poodle groom’ possibly connect with ‘Creating shadow puppets’? Who knows, but I’d certainly like to read such an intriguing article……it could be entitled “How poodle grooming helped me to step out of the shadows and become star.”

When you have new information you can brainstorm.

Where is that new idea?

You and your brain will thrive on new information. The great news is that the input does not have to highbrow. Yes, it can be fun to read Plato, but equally fun to watch The Big Bang Theory…..it’s all information.

  • We become habitual in our language. So we become habitual in our thinking
  • We become habitual in the way we move. So we become habitual in our thinking
  • We become habitual in what we read or watch. So we become habitual in our thinking.

Hey, have you noticed a pattern here? Let’s shake things up and have some new ideas.

Here is where you will find new ideas

Do something different each day, for example:

  • Purposely get lost
  • Read new things
  • Watch a TV program you would normally not watch
  • Dance
  • Learn a new word

Keep doing this day in, day out and soon you will find that you will see the world differently and be able to write an article a day.

Glenn in action

This is true of all writing. Let’s take an example from the book ‘Buy This Now: A Beginner’s Guide to Direct Response Copywriting’ by Glenn Fisher. You may have guessed that it’s a book about copywriting.

In a chapter called ‘Rule Number Eight: Always be feeding your brain’, Glenn says “You see, your brain is like Audrey II from The Little Shop of Horrors: it demands to be fed.”

Here is a list of what Glenn called random stuff he consumed in a month:

  • 3 graphic novels
  • 3 fiction books which include:
    • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
    • Death in the Andes
    • Motherless Brooklyn
  • 2 non-fiction books
    • How music works
    • Predictably Irrational
  • 5 Sales promotions
  • 4 films
    • Wreck It Ralph
    • Despicable Me
    • Scenes from a Mall
    • The Squid and the Whale
  • TV
    • The Sopranos
    • Got to Dance
  • New CDs
    • My Bloody Valentine
    • A$AP Rocky
    • The Deftones
  • Travel, visited Amsterdam
    • Rijksmuseum
    • Hash, Marihuana & Hemp Museum

Wow, Glenn fits more into one month than most people do in a year. He knows that this wide range of input will mix within his unconscious. He needs ideas, you need ideas – this approach is fundamental to your success as a writer.

Let me know when your blog is up and running as I would love to read it.

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4 Comments

  1. Well, it’s not running for a while now, but thanks for the ideas. Never though about associate 2 unrelated things, certainly will try it out. We’ll see how that goes.

    1. Hi Alex, Do let me know when you post your next blog would love to read it. As you know writing blogs takes a lot of work and the personal benefits of organising your thoughts is wonderful. It’s a bonus to know someone is reading them and hopefully benefiting.

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