Writing. Be prepared…

I’m now 2 weeks into the challenge I set myself to blog every day during September. That makes this the 14th consecutive blog I’ve written without fail, every single day. And you know what, so far I’ve not really found it that difficult at all.

I think the key to this has been preparation. Not so much the preparation of actual content, but of the subject matter. Most people will tell you that with writing (and so many other things in life), the hardest part is just getting started. That’s true to some extent but there’s a stage before that where people struggle, and that’s the idea generation. In this case, that’s having the idea of a subject to write about every day.

I think that if I’d had to come up with an idea on the fly every day, I’d have struggled. In fact, a friend of mine who also blogs regularly wrote about this just this week. Knowing this from previous experience, the way I’ve tackled it was to already have some ideas jotted down. Some days we’re creative and have lots of ideas, other days we struggle. This is my way of taking advantage of those creative days ahead of time. I simply have a note in Evernote that I add to whenever I have an idea for a blog. I just add a single line with the idea for a whole blog. This is usually enough of a reminder of all the initial thoughts I had explored. For example, a few days ago I added this line “ Be prepared. Explain how I use this list so I never struggle for ideas” that has turned into the blog you’re reading now :)

By having this full list of blog ideas ready, it takes the pressure off me. Ironically, this often leads to me coming up with more ideas so often not even having to use my list. I just checked and there’s currently 25 ideas on there. That’s plenty to go at even if I have no new ideas for quite a while!

Thanks

Richard