6 Effective Ways To Find What To Write About

Brainstorming is my least favorite so am sorry it didn’t make the list

If you consider yourself a writer, there are probably very few things that are of a higher priority than writing. But writing is a creative outlet which means that sometimes there is nothing to be let out.

It sucks when you know part of your life depends on writing and yet you have nothing to write about.

This can cause tremendous stress and anxiety on you and most people end up quitting altogether.

Showing up every day is an ideal that many writers struggle to reach and even more writers still try doing this on and off. I am one of the writers who have some good months where I can show up every day as well as months that I don’t want to lay my eyes on a canvas.

Showing up every day however is much more than just sitting your butt down and starting to write. If that is your strategy, you may find that you keep drawing blanks or write an article, and 500 words into it you begin questioning your sanity.

Showing up every day requires that you have ideas. Even if you are writing a fiction book, you probably have to come up with different scenarios in your mind concerning each character first else you will struggle to come up with an interesting story.

There are many ways we can form ideas. Brainstorming is my least favorite way because it mostly draws upon what is presently on your mind and it would require a lot more prodding around the recesses of your mind to come to the useful topics that are worth writing about — not to mention that the motivations and ideas of each topic would be diluted the longer it seats waiting for you to give it a body. Here are some ways to come up with ideas.

Writing prompts

If you write on platforms like this one, you could benefit from writing prompts. It is as if they give you permission to explore your own perspectives on a given idea.

Good writing prompts are powerful because they are general enough to apply to everybody but they are also specific enough to have multiple perspectives and voices on the same idea.

Think about a prompt like... “What is your idea of happiness?”

That’s a brilliant idea because it draws upon this ideal of happiness that probably all of us have.

Expanding on other people’s ideas

There are a lot of brilliant people that share thoughtful ideas. Some of these ideas don’t come fully formed though and when you read these people’s work, you can get a lightbulb moment that can help explain an experience that you had or offer more insight on ideas that you never considered before.

Getting philosophical a bit, expanding on other people’s ideas also helps to evolve our collective consciousness so it’s always a win-win.

Posts instead of commenting

When you read people’s work, you may have experiences of your own that are similar or different from the writer’s experience.

Many times I see people just going off in the comments. I think it is good to do that but it is better to just write your article as well and maybe link back to it if you really want the writer to read what you think about what they wrote.

I hate bullies or people that try to divide others so whenever I find such articles, I read them once or twice and see if they have any ideas I strongly oppose. I don’t comment on their posts if I find such ideas. I instead write an article to share my truth or take on the matter.

This stops me from just going off in the comments trying to explain myself in as few words as possible which could lose the message of what I am saying.

Capitalize on the heightened emotions

Closely related to the previous one is heightened emotions. This means that you will be triggered by some event that will unstabilize your emotions.

When this happens, you will have a lot more energy to address the instability and as for me, I always channel that into writing.

An editor recently tried to tell me how I should express myself and I hated it. I don’t want my experiences to be perverted by another person’s biases so I wrote this.

Not to mention that channeling your heightened emotions into writing can help you heal from and move past whatever is causing you instability.

Entertainment that explores other cultures or ideas

Keeping an open mind helps you to dip into infinite reserves of knowledge and ideas that you can use in your writing.

Entertainment is one of those things that can help you learn about other cultures or ideas without having to go there physically.

I recently just discovered my love for science fiction and this opened up a whole new world for me. It helps me see the world differently and it influences me into making better and more rounded decisions.

So you might imagine that when I write, ideas that were closed off to me previously are now open for exploration and consideration.

I choose to approach cultures or ideas through the window of entertainment because it is not invasive. Most people are not willing to let go of their beliefs and preaching to them or decreeing opposing beliefs never ends well.

In entertainment, however, the mind stops or reduces the effort of trying to fight for its identity and just focuses on having a good time. You don’t play a game and come out thinking that you are a murderer. This is because you can freely explore the reality of death and destruction through the game you play. Maybe through it all, you learn a strategy or develop an imaginative skill of some sort.

As a writer, you need these experiences because most of your ideas are not fully baked with the current experiences you have. When you explore other ideas, it may help you understand your experiences better and thereby help you consider writing about ideas that you previously wouldn’t.

Get enough sleep

The brain needs to rest. You can only go so near without rest. Sleep is the most effective state of rest because you temporarily suspend waking consciousness functions.

This can help you explore ideas more deeply without passing them through the lens of your beliefs and other constructs.

This way you organize the information you need and the most important of it all comes to the top of your awareness when you are awake.

Enough sleep means something different for each individual. Whereas most would suggest that you take at least 8 hours, many people require more or less than that. Many still would also argue that they don’t have the luxury of sleeping that long. So I am just simply going to say that try as much as possible to maximize the amount of sleep you can get especially at night.

As a writer, enough sleep will help organize your thoughts so that your productivity is not hindered by analysis paralysis and on top of that it will give you the energy to sit through your writing sessions and write all you have to say without the body needing to compensate for the rest it didn’t get.

All the methods I have written about help you write with a lot of energy and enthusiasm when done right. This can help you build momentum in your writing to such a degree that you can implement other strategies like brainstorming ideas to be written in the future.

These methods are the ones that I use to help me write every single day and when I abandon them, I soon get overwhelmed and find myself stuck in a writing block. I hope they will be just as effective for you if you consider them.

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