I frequently have difficulty coming up with new ideas for blog posts. Putting up a new post every day was easy for a while since I had lots of ideas clamoring to get out of my head, but now that I’ve made over 150 daily posts, it often takes me more time than it used to come up with a new subject. This was the case yesterday morning, but it was through that feeling of writer’s block that I came up with this post.
The most helpful trick I’ve found for getting through writer’s block is to stop trying so hard to come up with an idea. In most cases, the more I struggle and strain to think of something, the less likely I am to succeed. When I take some time away from it and do something else or simply relax, sooner or later a fresh idea pops into my head. This often happens in the shower, so I find it useful to keep a problem I’m working on in the back of my head when I go in there. Usually, either by the end of the shower or in the middle of it, I get inundated with ideas and potential solutions that seem to just work themselves out without any effort on my part. I don’t take extra showers simply for inspiration but I do make good use of my normal showers when I’m feeling stuck.
Something else that works for me is based on an idea I got from James Altucher’s book Choose Yourself. He recommends becoming an “idea machine” by writing down 10 new ideas a day. This will generate a lot of bad ideas, but Altucher says that that is part of the creative process. If you come up with enough ideas, you’re bound to get some good ones. While I don’t usually write my ideas down, I still find it helpful to think through a number of different possibilities without limiting myself to only coming up with ideas I think are good; at some point, this helps me get to an idea that I really like, and then I’m ready to write about it.
There are some posts I’ve enjoyed writing much more than others and certain subjects I prefer to write about whenever I can. However, I always try to produce quality posts. Sometimes people will tell me that they really enjoyed a particular post and found something good in it even if I didn’t think it was among my best work. On other occasions, a post I loved writing and thought would get a lot of feedback gets very little attention. I never know how anyone will react to any given post, and, since I’m just writing these in my spare time as a way to put my ideas into the world (both as reminders for myself of useful things I’ve found and as resources for others who may benefit from them), I don’t worry much about coming up with a stellar idea. I just write a post about whatever’s on my mind on any given day and do my best to make it worth reading. That’s worked for me so far and I plan to keep it up for as long as possible.