How to Always Have New Magazine Article Ideas
Use a Notebook as an Idea Catcher: Avoid Stale Ideas
Nov 23, 2008
It's good for a writer to be comfortable with her niche areas, getting paid steadily for magazine article work and attracting new publishing clients. The article ideas clipping file is bulging and organized, and yet still there are times that the writer is writing on fumes and she knows it. How, she wonders, can she stay fresh and inspired?
The Way To Use the Idea Catcher Notebook
The answer is to be found in a wee small notebook, maybe moleskin, maybe spiral. They don't get carried around day-in and day-out for only the most profound thoughts and headiest quotes. They are for musings, intriguing comments and questions heard or stumbled upon, reactions to news, relationships, reading responses; descriptions and solutions to problems (you could even draw mini mind-maps).
There is so much to write about that will jar loose so much more. Perhaps the writer is on a bus and it's going to be a moderately long ride. She can get out her notebook and write about what her life's mission is. She can mentally take the position of a soul searcher, a seeker after truth, an adventurer or a wanderer and write what she thinks, feelsl and observes from one of those identities. She might go to a movie and if it affects her write a mini-review. She can record her wildest dreams and fantasies.
She can put herself into the life of an intriguing stranger she shared a glance with at Starbuck's. What is his life like? What does he do? What does he dream about? What does he believe in passionately?
Where To Write In the Idea Catcher and When
She can be in a long line at the post office, get out her notebook and think about her dog Charlie. She can describe his personality with human qualities. She didn't know him as well as she does now when she named him. Does he suit his name? What would she name him now? What one word would she use to describe her dog? What does she think her pet thinks about?
She can sit at the art museum in a sunny spot and list the major changes in her past life, present life, those coming up and those she would like to bring about in her future life.
How to Write in the Idea Catcher
As a writer she must remember to be as specific as she can. She will use plenty of sensory words that also can jar the memory and bring forth ideas. She will create the sights, sounds, smells and textures for the reader even if the reader is only going to be herself.
At times she will go back over earlier entries and rewrite something that grabs her or fashion it into something else--perhaps an article? A think piece? A memoir? A reflection?
Having Fun with the Idea Catcher
Some days just for fun she takes herself on field trips just for the sake of writing things in her idea catcher. It might be a walk in the woods, a trip to the park, a walk along the beach, a trip downtown--all enjoyed in detailed description in her notebook.
She sits at a coffee shop and collects bits of overheard conversation. Some writers make entire blogs out of these bits with some imagination. The part of the conversation she's not privy to is as engaging as what she does get to hear.
The Idea Catcher Provides Article Ideas
And every evening she goes home, sits down at her computer, and opens the idea catcher like a rich woman opening an expensive purse. She is always excited to see what it will provide for that night's inspirational writing. Things that she wrote down without hardly thinking about it, now bloom into total well-written inspired and inspiring articles. She doesn't fear becoming stale anymore.
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