The terror of the blank page, by Terry Freedman
Fortunately, I don’t often suffer from writer’s block — my problem is more often a lack of time in which to write what I’d like to. But if you are stumped for what to write or, like me, you sometimes wish to publish something without having to spend hours on it, here are some ideas you might wish to consider. They have all worked very well for me.
Weekly themes
This takes a bit of planning, but it’s something you can do when you have an hour or two to spare. Think of some regular “slots” you could have on your blog, such as Monday Motivation, or Tuesday Tips. Write the articles (which may only be a few lines long), and schedule them to appear at particular times. For example, you could publish an inspirational quotation every Monday morning at 7am, under a category called Monday Motivation.
Annual themes
Awareness days and similar are very useful, especially for collating resources and links to other websites and blog posts. For example, every year on my other blog I publish an article on International Ada Lovelace Day and also on Safer Internet Day. Here are a few places to look for such days:
United Nations International Days
Daily themes
This idea can work in two ways. One way is to publish a blog post every day at, say, 7pm called What I Read Today.
Another idea you can use is publishing articles called On This Day. Once you’ve been blogging for a year or more you can refer to your own blog posts of a year ago. For example, I wrote a blog post called On This Day #5: The Perfect Blog Post. In that article I referred to, and linked to, an article I’d written on the same date in a previous year, and then said whether or not I still agree with it. (I didn’t.)
Alternatively, there may be particular world events, or personal events, that are significant to you. For example, “On this day I was lying on a beach in Italy. Today I’m lying on my sofa wondering if I’ll ever travel abroad again.”
Bear in mind that themed blog posts don’t have to be very long, as I wrote in How Long Should A Blog Post Be? A “Thought for the Day” post, for instance, might only be 10 words long.
Updating blog posts
Once you have a few blog posts under your belt, you can start to revisit them and, if necessary, update them — or publish updated versions of them.
For example, some years ago I published an article about where to find free illustrations for your blog or website, as you can’t guarantee that repositories like Google Images are actually copyright-free. Over the years that article has been updated as I’ve found out about more websites providing free illustrations. The most recent iteration (soon to be updated, in fact) is here:
12 articles for free illustrations for your articles
Creative writing prompts
Just search on the web for “creative writing prompts”, and you’ll find loads of websites and apps listed. As it happens, I publish a “PhotoPrompt” every so often, in which I include a photograph I’ve taken and invite writers to use it to spark off some ideas.
Use Google Alerts
This is like searching the web, but having the search executed without your having to do much. Go to Google Alerts, and set up an alert with a word or phrase you’re interested in. Then “tell” it that you would like the results as they come in, or just in one email summary each day.
There is quite often a lot of dross in the results, but it’s worth using it anyway. I have often discovered things going on that I wouldn’t have found out about otherwise, mainly because I don’t have the time to do the searches manually day in and day out. In other words, Google Alerts is a great time-saver.
Read, read, read
I think it’s good to read everything you can in your specialist area. Not just magazines but other blogs and websites. Now, you might protest that looking all over the place to see if various blogs have been updated would be pretty time-consuming — and you’d be right. Therefore, read my article on How To Have Blog Posts Come To You (Instead Of Having To Go To Them) to find out what you can do about that.
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