(Warning: this post briefly discusses the day-to-day affects of Depression/Anxiety)
Some of you might think this blogpost topic (i.e., blogging ideas) is a bit of a cheat – which, honestly? It kind of is.
But… that’s kind of the point? I guess?
No matter how long you’ve been blogging, you’ll have moments when you just don’t know what to blog about.
Either because your brain is producing nothing but white noise in answer to your increasingly frantic requests for blogging material...
...or because you can’t seem to string your ethereal ideas together into something readable, or at the very least coherent.
It happens to all of us.
But don’t worry – I’m not about to become a blogger who only blogs about blogging.
There are people who do that extremely well, but I have neither the desire or the attention span to be one of them.
Instead, I had a kind of lightbulb moment, when looking through my ‘blogpost ideas’ word document that maybe the document could be the idea!
(Mind = blown, obviously 😅)
So, I’m hoping that this post will be somewhat relatable to my fellow bloggers
(and at least a little interesting for those of you who don’t realise how much running around with zero direction we bloggers metaphorically (...and sometimes physically,) do on a regular basis.)
Like a lot of bloggers, I do indeed have a word document marked ‘Blogpost ideas.’
(Some people may have a physical notebook, an entire folder – either physical or digital, or carve it on the floors with a penknife.
The principle’s the same.
Except you may need more repair work with that last one.)
...Which, y’know, is a place for blogpost ideas.
I don’t know about the other blogging types, but my ideas document is a cacophony of chaos.
It’s like the mental/digital equivalent of a shoebox that I stick all sorts of odds and ends into.
(Aka a digital manifestation of my disorganised and harebrained mental state.)
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| Via Giphy |
Every now and then, I half-remember something which I may or may not have stuck in this doc. ‘for safe-keeping’ and end up rooting around the half-formed notes and bizarre highlights and font colours -
(which… probably had a code for deciphering once upon a time? Some logic, maybe? Or maybe I was rushing and used whatever the software was set to at the time, who knows?)
- looking for whatever it is I think I could actually write about.
...And then often I find I don’t even like that idea, and end up writing something entirely different.
(...Like apparently having an odd meta-moment like this one!)
But occasionally it can actually be helpful!
I have found ideas lurking in there, alongside the half-formed thoughts that I can’t decipher when I go back to them...
(like, one idea just said ‘Past lives’ – I mean, ok?
Interesting and all, Cee, but where the hell was I going with that?!
WHAT WAS PAST ME THINKING OF?!)
Sometimes I end up sparking a slightly different thought from my original thoughts
– a different angle on an idea I’d previously had, for example, or a way to turn it into more than one post.
I often stick random content-generator stuff in there to come back to later.
I usually use this site from Portent for simple, but a lot of the time odd and interesting, combinations.
And I also used this site, from SEO Review Tools, for more in-depth stuff based on other people’s headlines, and a starting point for research (remember: always use as inspiration, not plagiarism, dearest nerdlets!)
And of course, I end up going through my ideas doc, now filled with pages of random ideas, every now and then... and deleting a lot of them.
Some of them are entirely useless, some of them make no conceivable sense, some of them just bore me, and others just require too much research that I don’t have time to do, and realistically will never get around to doing.
Because I know myself dearest nerdlets – if I’m not interested in and/or passionate about the thing I’m writing, it ain’t gonna get done.
My concentration span and ability to think things through linearly is impacted enough by my Depression/Anxiety as it is, without adding a topic that I’m not really interested in.
A lot of the time a topic I really do want to write about becomes muddled in the process of actually being written, and I end up losing steam and direction half-way through.
(Because of this, I also have a computer folder full of half-written drafts; I am often a small ball of chaos and confusion. 😅)
OK, this got a bit ramble-y, but then, what else is new?
The TL; DR is this:
A place to stick all your blogpost ideas is useful, but it’s not a magic bullet
– sometimes you still won’t know what to blog about, and sometimes you’ll have to spend a while trawling through your ideas and trying to form them into something cohesive.
But that’s kind of half the fun, really.
How do you come up with things to blog about?
Do you have a place to stick your blogpost and/or other creative ideas?
Do you sometimes look back at your notes and wonder what the hell they mean?
Talk to me! 😅💬
Previous Nerd Church Posts:
Yeah... I can totally relate to stressing over not having things to write about. I think my problem is that I don't actually have a physical place to write down blogging ideas. My ideas come to me at 3:00 in the morning in bed and then are gone by the morning. So, I think I need to take a page out of your book!
ReplyDeleteHa, maybe try a notepad by your bed? But then, there's plenty of writing materials within grabby-hands distance of my bed, and sometimes I'm still like 'Ugh, too tired to write it down, I'll remember it!' Spoiler: I never remember it. ;)
DeleteMy blogging ideas folder sounds a lot like yours! :)
ReplyDeleteHa, glad I'm not the only one! :)
DeleteI laugh sometimes how much I wing it when blogging! :)
ReplyDeleteLol, don't we all! XD
Delete