Tapping Your Muse: How to Find Ideas for Writing

[Editor's note: Where do you find your muse? Where do you get inspiration for writing? How can you create your author platform, build your blog, and continually create new content? Today's guest, Tessa Shepperson, has some great ideas about finding ideas for new things to write about].

When I first set up my blog in February 2006 it was a bit of a spur of the moment thing.  A ‘this might be fun’ thing.  My new window on the world.

I am a lawyer and my blog was on my ‘niche’ subject, residential landlord and tenant law.  Predictably I called it the Landlord Law blog.

In the first few years,  I only blogged occasionally, once a week generally, sometimes more sometimes less.  It was set up as a fun thing after all so I would only blog when I felt like it.  It would sort of go in waves.  There would be a few weeks where I would get lots of ideas, and then barren periods when I would not blog for several weeks.  Once I left it for well over a month.

Then  would feel guilty, decide ‘I must post”, and go online to find something to post about.  Strangely, after this I would then notice more things to blog about, and would find that I was on another blogging wave.

I blogged about all sorts of things.  Not just my niche, but also legal aid, eco stuff, even a post on a stately home I visited on holiday once.  Not good really for a professional blog, but then I did not really see it like that.

However about two years ago I started reading about social media and blogging, and read about the power of a blog to promote a business.  From then on, I decided, my blog was going on landlord and tenant law, and I would blog a lot more regularly – at least three times a week.

However would I find enough to write about?

Actually it has been surprisingly easy.  The secret is to blog all the time, as the more you do, the more the ideas come, and the easier it is to write. I can knock up a blog post pretty quickly now.

So, where do my ideas come from?  Here is a selection of  my best sources:

Newspapers

Both online and offline and offline newspapers can be mined for ideas.  News items on my niche come up every now and again, and I owe it to my readers to report on it, not just giving the bland facts but also putting my own spin on it.

Google alerts

I have these for all sorts of ‘trigger phrases’ in my niche (as well as for my business and personal names), and often pick up things when the alerts come in.

Other blogs in my niche

Find the other bloggers in your niche and make friends with them. Read their articles and promote them. I often pick up on something written by one of the others, and write about it, making sure I give them a name check and link.  They do the same for me.

Professional journals

Are their professional journals in your niche? These can be a great source of information and ideas for new articles.

Darren Rowse’s book

I bought Darren’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog ebook last year.  If I am looking for inspiration, I read it though and generally get several new ideas.  It is a great book and should be bought by all bloggers.

Copyblogger Resources

Copyblogger is full of great resources for writing headlines, copywriting, writing ebooks, and more. Reading and thinking about headlines  sometimes gives me a good idea for a post, in particular  ‘how to’ and other instructional posts.

Doing a series

Creating a series of articles around one topic is a very good way to come up with new ideas. You can use a series to fully explore a topic in great detail.

Emails from readers

I get a steady stream of emails from my readers, and I will use these inquiries to write an article to answer their questions on my blog. If one person has a particular question, it is quite likely that many others have that question, too.  These are often the best posts for attracting comments.

Press releases

I often don’t use press releases because it seem like everyone else writes about the same issues, but sometimes they spark an idea or a connection with something else I have read recently, which will allow me to develop an original article on that topic.

Personal experience

Personal experiences can give you some great ideas to write about. Sometimes I will have a case at work, or I will be outraged about something and do a bit of a rant, or I will attend an event and write about it.  Writing about events is usually very popular with the event organizers, and will generally be of interest to others who attended or who were invited but could not go.

Just Do It

Overall I think the most important thing is just to do it and the ideas will come.  If you go looking for things to write about, your subconscious will carry on working while you are asleep or doing something else, and all sorts of good ideas will pop up.  You need to do a lot of conscious thinking first though, to get the sub conscious machine working.

Or you can just be like Russell T Davies (the TV writer who resurrected the UK Doctor Who series) who says he goes to the ‘Ideas Shop’ in Abergavenny.  It may be hard to find though ….

Tessa Shepperson is an English lawyer and blogs professionally at Landlord Law. Follow her on twitter @tessashepperson