Blogging Tips

A Simple Way To Develop Writing Ideas For Your Blog

Written by Debbie Harbeson from Debbie Harbeson

If I asked you to tell me about your day yesterday, what would you say?

Did you efficiently and rapidly make it through your well-planned to-do list? Or did you have constant interruptions and distractions?

Did you have a chore or project you really needed to do but chose to procrastinate? Or was yesterday the day you finally focused your energy and finished the job?

Maybe you unexpectedly spent the day in the doctor’s office. Or maybe you visited the internet to do a quick fact check and ended up spending two hours on Twitter.

Maybe you haven’t made it past my second question because you’re scratching your head and thinking, “Are there really people out there who make well-planned to-do lists!?”

No matter what kind of day you had yesterday, whether it went according to plan or not, I can guarantee one thing: you learned something new. Sure, you may not have stopped long enough to really think about it, but it’s a fact that you do learn something new every day.

One way you can put this new knowledge to work for you is to use it to generate topic ideas for your writing.

Start by compiling a list of what you learn every day. On any given day, your list might be short or it might be long; it might be funny, or it might be life-and-death serious.

After a few days, compare your lists. Look for patterns to your insights. You might want to place them into categories. Pretty soon, you’ll have a big file of information you can use in many ways, limited only by your imagination.

This is a natural way to generate new writing material because you’re taking advantage of what your brain does best, which is making new connections. You also have something that is uniquely yours – your individual experiences as you live out your day.

You now have writing prompts that actually mean something to you personally. You will be able to more easily write about the ideas, topics, issues and controversies you run into day in and day out. As a bonus, this act of thinking about how and what you are learning, often called metacognition, often improves your ability to learn.

So, what did you learn today?

Written by Debbie Harbeson from Debbie Harbeson
Posted on May 1st, 2009 and filed under Blogging, Writing
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11 Responses to “A Simple Way To Develop Writing Ideas For Your Blog”

Author comments are in a darker gray color for you to easily identify the posts author in the comments

PV Reymond says:

May 1, 2009 at 12:09 pm

Hi Debbie,

This is a great method that anyone can use to write articles for their blogs. Many people want to write almost everyday something on their blogs, but they don’t know what to write, this is the solution.

On the other hand, it is true that everyday you learn something, it is all about writing down what you learned and adapting and enriching it for the for the topic you have your blog built around,

Thanks,
^PV Reymond
Patti Stafford says:

May 1, 2009 at 1:35 pm

Today I learned that you wrote this article for me.

Yesterday was actually a good day. Today’s the day I’m having trouble with (migraine). So instead of beating myself up because I don’t feel like doing research or writing, I’m using the time to do some past due reading and commenting. Short reads mind you, but still seeing what’s happening around the blog world of writing.

Thanks for this post. I enjoyed it.
Patti
BLOGGERUSER says:

May 1, 2009 at 3:08 pm

Cool… frankly i had some of these ideas to write for my personal blog some months ago. But i ended soon as i sometimes thought i had nothing new and probably nothing to write about today.
Also why i ended was, there were no readers for my personal blog for such content.
Anyway i agree to you that it often improves ability to learn.
Thanks for cool writing ideas.
Budi Irawan says:

May 1, 2009 at 5:01 pm

Hi, Debbie

yes, u’re right. I always learn something new everyday and sometimes this “something new” can give me inspiration to write in blog.

Hmm..today I learned about patience and confidence.
Roseli A. Bakar says:

May 1, 2009 at 11:41 pm

Another great writing ideas from Debbie. Cool.

I sometimes have ideas on what to write from the SPAM emails that I receive everyday and it could turn out to be a great POST. lol
Luke Hedman says:

May 1, 2009 at 11:56 pm

That was a good read Deb. Quick, to the point, and most of all, useful!

One of the topics I’m starting to blog about is songwriting. It hit me how useful this advice could be for songwriters. Songs are very often about personal life experiences (the big and the boring included).

I have an article I’ve been working on for the subject and your advice helped a lot. I’ll be sure to mention you and link here when it’s done.

Thanks again!
Debbie Harbeson says:

May 2, 2009 at 10:40 am

Wow, I’m learning a lot just by reading everyone’s comments! I’m going off now to write it all down.

Thanks for the thoughtful responses. Keep writing.
Ecommerce Help - Tyrone Shum says:

May 4, 2009 at 5:03 am

Apart from being direct to the point, this post has been quite informative and fun to read. Apparently, it hits me when you said that instead of doing the things you planned to do, you have forgotten your goal for the day and started doing something else. Usually, this happens a lot, plus procrastination can always get in the way.

I think one good way to help you develop ideas for writing is to immerse yourself in creative thinking or perhaps adding humor to the way you write, that way you don’t get the writer’s block and indulge in fun yourself. Reminding myself too that if I don’t figure out something good and interesting to write about for my blog can minus its traffic. Selfish, but it is true, since regularly updated blogs with good content is almost always in a win win situation.

True enough, we all learn something each day, we are just too busy to reflect but try jotting it down, the next thing you knew you have a wonderful idea blossoming inside your head.