Inspiration and Writing
Four Amazing Sources for Writing Ideas
Easily find ideas for writing
Since joining Medium more than two years ago, I have published hundreds of articles. New ideas and topics can become trickier to source when you pass several hundred unless you know where to look. Closing in on the 1000 mark, I thought now would be a good time to share where you can find a steady stream of inspiration.
Finding new topics continually
How do you find a new topic each day for two years and beyond? Before starting to blog regularly, I had several articles published in regional and national magazines during my career. Since retiring, I have begun writing regularly.
Let’s quickly go through my process to date. In mid-2019, I published a book titled Uncommon Sense. I began creating articles from the book, posting them on my website and LinkedIn, gaining good traction within a short period.
About a year later, I discovered Medium and started publishing one story a day, a habit I kept for about two years. While I continue to publish a few times each week, I have spent the past few months polishing some of my older articles.
This “polishing” process is somewhat tedious but necessary. You learn a lot about writing after two years of publishing daily. Some of those early articles are pretty bad. Before retiring, I always held myself to a high standard. However, since retiring, I relaxed it a bit too much!
When honing a skill such as writing, you need to allow room for failing. I have always believed failing forward is one of the greatest teachers in life. This is why I am going back through my old articles. I can learn so much from the many ways I have failed in my writing as I continue to hone this skill.
Admittedly it has been quite an experience! I had no idea how bad some of my earlier writing was. Let’s just say I have a lot of polishing to do! Wax on, wax off, as said in that old movie!
If you have published a book, why not use it as your first source for blogging? I easily pulled 50+ articles from my 200-page book and continue to use it as a resource for ideas.
Let’s look at a few places to get a steady stream of ideas for your writing.
Books
As an avid book reader and collector for years, I find an endless flow of ideas from books written by some fabulous thinkers. One book alone spawned well more than 100 articles! More on this book in a minute.
I have always loved browsing the large book retailers for that next book to purchase. While I like buying books, I have found plenty of ideas simply browsing. Sometimes the titles alone provide ideas.
Because I never know when an idea will hit, I often carry index cards to capture as many as I can. I also use my phone for this purpose at times, but the cards provide easier access to me in the near term.
After visiting a large book retailer a little over a year ago, the idea hit me to visit our local public library. The library has proven to be a gold mine of ideas. The great thing about it is everything is cataloged and organized, making it a simple matter to find books about anything that interests you.
Apply This Concept to Your Writing
If you have written a book or have old essays or articles, use them as a resource for material. Freshen them up and publish away! Then there are always other people’s books, an endless resource from which you can grab a concept or topic, put it in your own words, expand on it, and publish away!
It goes without saying the more you read, the more ideas you will have. Don’t neglect reading books and anything else you can get your hands and eyes on. When you start looking for ideas in books, you will undoubtedly find them!
Journals and Experience
As I ran out of material from my book, I started going back into my journals, picking up many ideas. One day it dawned on me to simply write from my experience. As an executive and leader for many years, I had plenty of experience from which to pull. When I retired some years ago, I became a professional coach, further deepening this experience.
Hence, much of my writing has a leadership slant. I have also taken the liberty to write about my past and the impact of relationships on life. Relationships emerged as a common theme as I went back through my journals.
Apply This Concept to Your Writing
If you journal, you will be surprised at the ideas you can extract. Look for any common themes you find. Everyone has life and work experience from which they can draw as well. What experience in your life and from the lives of others can you use for ideas?
Quotes
After writing between one to two hundred articles, I stumbled on some of the old quotes I had recorded for years. Near my journals, I had several notebooks and files full of quotes. I have always loved quotes, and many have impacted me greatly. A single quote can easily give you a new idea or topic to write on.
The thing about quotes is they pack so much meaning into so few words. Many quotes are like the proverbial “picture that paints a thousand words.”
As mentioned above, one book alone has given me more than 100 articles. The book is full of quotes and is still available on Amazon. Its title is Thoughts On The Business Of Life. Editors at Forbes Magazine compiled the quotes for the book, and it has been by far my richest source for ideas yet. It contains so many quotes I am sure I can easily get another 100 to 200 additional articles from it!
You have a vast resource for quotes at your fingertips on the internet. Just google a subject and add the word “quote” to the inquiry. You will be amazed at how many quotes you can find about any subject imaginable!
Apply This Concept to Your Writing
Do you have favorite quotes that make you think? Use them to spur your thoughts. They are so rich at times I will write more than one article based on a single quote, and I am sure you can too. Go online and search for quotes on a subject that interests you and be ready to mine pure gold! When you have a minute, visit one of my favorite quote websites, AZ Quoes.com.
Words
For many recent articles thinking about the impact of a specific word or term has spawned ideas. Since I often write on leadership, words such as integrity, mentoring, serving, attitude, managing, teams, emotional intelligence, and a thousand others create ideas and topics for writing countless articles.
As with quotes, I have always loved words. Everyone has either a print dictionary or an online dictionary they can use to mine for ideas. Think of any specific words or terms you may use.
I often use a little trick when creating a topic around a word. I look up the definition of the primary word, then search for its synonyms and antonyms. By looking at both the meaning of a word and its opposite, you better understand the word’s use, providing amazing opportunities to write in more depth.
Apply This Concept to Your Writing
Build a word list. Focus on a word, such as perseverance, leadership, relationship, inspiration, attitude, self-awareness, etc. There is no limit to the ideas you can draw from a single word.
What words have great meaning to you that contain concepts or topics on which you can expand? Make a list and begin playing with titles for possible articles. Many claim a great way to come up with an article is to develop the title first. While this does not always work for me, it works often enough to use it when I can
While you are at it, Goggle a word to find how many hits it gets. For example, googling “inspiration” returns more than 3.5 billion hits, while googling “motivation” returns 1.8 billion hits. That is a tremendous number of references for each term! But that result has led me to write more using an inspirational rather than a motivational approach.
Final thoughts
I find it curious how many people write articles about writer’s block. There are so many interesting subjects and so much information available about literally anything and everything online, I find writer’s block to be a nonissue. Perhaps it is my level of curiosity that makes the difference?
If you do get “writer’s block,” why not start googling something that interests you, or go to YouTube, the second most used search engine, and watch a video about the subject. There is no end to the resources available to us online, so why not use them!
As I often end many of my articles, I leave you with a final quote on which to give thought.
“Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.” Ray Bradbury (1920–2012)
May you have a wonderful, rich, and full life of blessing others with your writing!
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Bill Abbate Leadership Writer and Editor in ILLUMINATION
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