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Thoughts, Stories, Action: How to Never Run Out of Ideas to Write About
THOUGHT
“Start writing no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” — Louis L’amour
STORY
Every so often I open an email from a name I don’t recognize, and it’s an aspiring writer reaching out with the same question I’ve been hearing since I got into this biz:
“Hi, Jason. I love your work and you’re so great (ok, I made this part up). I want to be a writer but I just don’t know what to write about. I feel like I could write a few pieces and then run out of things to say. How do you come up with ideas to write about?”
I love that this is an easy question for me to answer because when I first started writing, it certainly wasn’t.
Now that I’ve been living the writer’s life for quite some time, coming up with ideas is never a problem for me. In fact, I actually have the opposite problem — too many things to write about. And I’d bet that most other writers share that same dilemma.
In my Evernote sits an ever-growing backlog of ideas, thoughts, and crudely-drafted stories waiting to be written about. On average, I’d say that I generate about 3 article topics per day. With my current daily writing allotment of ~2 hours, at best I pump out…
