Note: This is Day 14 in the “Recharge Your Creative Batteries in 31 Days” Challenge. For the rest of July, we’ll be posting different ways for you to get yourself on the path to living in a creative flow and reaching your writing goals. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any.
In preparation for this blog series, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I was perusing the archives of Problogger.net the other day when I came across an article about how to use a magazine to improve your blog. The article mentioned seven ways you can use a magazine to make your blog better.
One use stood out to me the most: coming up with blog post ideas.
The article said you can use a magazine that’s not in your niche to help you generate blog post ideas. This intrigued me. One thing writers often complain about is not having ideas or not knowing what to write about.
So I wanted to build out the magazine-idea process for you here, that way you can never say “I don’t know what to write about.”
Brainstorming With A Magazine
Here’s the process I used to brainstorm about a hundred new ideas for my writing:
- Grab a stack of magazines—It’s best to get magazines in a variety of genres, that way you’re exposing yourself to different types of headlines and content. If you don’t have any magazines laying around, head to the local bookstore or library.
- Grab a notebook and pen/pencil—You’ll need a way to write down all the awesome new ideas you’re about to generate.
- Sit in a comfortable place—A must for any brainstorming session.
- Starting with the first magazine, read all of the headlines on the cover.
- Brainstorm how the topics in your genre can fit the headlines you’re reading. For example, a headline from a fitness magazine might say, “Exercise 101: Your Guide to Fitness Basics,” and you could turn that around and use it for almost any niche. For this blog, I might use the following: “Writing 101: Your Guide to Creativity-Building Basics.”
- Flip through the magazine, reading the headlines and anything that stands out to you. Continue to write down all ideas that pop in your head. (Remember, just because you write an idea down doesn’t mean you have to use it. This is a brainstorming session, write every idea down. You can refine the list later.)
- Repeat with the next magazine in your stack.
This process is a simple way to generate a long list of viable writing ideas. And it doesn’t take more than 20-30 minutes per magazine (or less if you just look at the cover headlines) to do this exercise. This process also works well to help you snap out of a “writer’s block” moment.
Your challenge today/this weekend is to bury yourself in the magazine stacks for at least an hour. I guarantee you’ll walk away with a long list of things to write.
Share With Us
What was your experience with this magazine-headline-idea-generation process exercise?
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This is a great idea that works because it forces us to go OUTSIDE of our regular habits. You can do the same thing with a bookstore (get ideas from the titles of other books), an unrelated blog (if you write about flowers look at blogs about dogs and then repurpose the ideas to your own topic) or even a coffee shop (get ideas from the faces of different people around you, or from snatches of conversation you overhear.)
Ideas are EVERYWHERE!!