Creating Content When You’re Stuck

by Kim Niemi

Ever have one of those Monday mornings? You hit the snooze as many times as you can, and when you  finally drag yourself out of bed – still tired – the dog wants extra attention, chomping on his squeakiest toy as you choke down that first cup of coffee, and you wrack your brain for a blog post idea, with the deadline looming, and keep coming up empty?

Ever wish you had a system for jump-starting the creative process when it’s playing hard-to-get? Well here it is. You’re welcome.

1. Check the daily trades. Those are the online (and offline too, I s’pose) news sources, blogs, and mags that keep you informed of all that’s happening within your field. Make note of any articles that jump out at you and jot them down somewhere (i.e., copy and paste to a doc of some sort, or bookmark them—whatever works for you), along with notes about alternative angles you can explore, etc. If you don’t want to write about one of them today, they’ll be there for another time.

2. Consult your topics list. If you haven’t been doing #1 above, this step won’t help you much today – but if you start now, you’ll be able to use it next time around.

If you DO have a list, give it a once-over. There are always ideas you forgot you wanted to write about, or that will jump out at you with a new angle to work. Write about one of them now.

3. See what’s trending on Twitter. You want to write something that, once shared, gets lots of interest, right? So why not write about something that already HAS a lot of interest to give yourself a head start? Do a little hashtag recon and then get writing. (I’m about to write “The 10 Ways Coffee Saves My Life Daily” for #NationalCoffeeDay. Wink, wink.)

If you go through each of these steps, something is bound to present itself, not to mention you’ll be building a list of topics to draw on later, and that’s always a good thing. Because those “empty” mornings do come. And you need to be prepared.

Have another trick for getting unstuck when writing? Share ‘em below!


IMAGE CREDIT: BRAM VAN DER STICHELEN