A Month of Ideas for "What Can I Write on My Blog Today?"

I write three blog posts each week (barring something weird going on in my life--and it happens).  I don’t really have trouble coming up with blog topics for the three very different blogs. Now time to do the research and write them … that’s a story for another day. But coming up with ideas, no, not what I struggle with.

In fact, if I were to have that kind of difficulty, I would pack in one or more of my blogs. If it ain’t fun, at this point in my life, I ain’t gonna do it.

But friends of mine confess to having difficulty. Voila! A blog post topic occurs.

If you struggle, too, here are some suggestions. Please add suggestions in the comments section below. I’d love to have some fresh ideas, too.

1) Interview one of your characters, just as you might an author. Giving other authors some interview questions could be your spin so they get to know their own characters better.

2) Talk about some interesting historical or scientific (or some such thing) aspect and how it fits your book. For example, I was fascinated with brothel tokens from the OldWest and wrote about them connected to my prostitute in Streetwalker.

3) Helpful tools you rely on to help you write better/faster. I wrote a post on the tomato timer for the Pomodoro Technique.

4) Review the best on-line tutorials you've found helpful for writing. Kathy Weyer, author of Stitches, did for Scrivener.

5) Share the writing risks have you taken and what you gained--or lost--by taking the risk.

6) Publish a short story that might be backstory for a character in your novel.

7) Describe how you navigate social media and build your unique platform.

8) Ask readers to give you direction on a project. I did this with my NaNoWriMo options. People like telling you what to do. ;-)

9) Create and publish 50 or 10 (or whatever) writing prompts or exercises for readers for when they're stuck. I did that and had lots of page views. That's what I did here!

10) Choose an odd topic to inform readers about, such as “What is fan fiction and what are the caveats, sites, issues?”

11) Interview another blogger or an author you admire. Create one set of questions you can use again and again.

12) Describe your journey to being an author from the beginning through transitions to your vision for the end point.

13) How do you carve out protected writing time in the midst of a busy life? Authors are always looking for ideas.

14) Read titles of others’ blog posts and get ideas for topics you can give your take on.

15) Review books related to your blog’s focus. I’ve reviewed writing books and books on relationship issues. Notify the author of the upcoming review to see if he/she will promote it, too. Drive more traffic to your blog.

16) Have you just learned about/started using another new social media outlet to promote your writing and your platform? Share that experience with your readers?

17) What are you realllly good at in the writing process? Editing? Plotting? Planning? Choose that element and write a series on various aspects.

18) What is your business plan? How did you develop it? Most writers don’t have one, so help them get where you are.

19) What experiences have you had with critique partners and/or writing groups? Share what you’ve learned and give some guidelines that worked for you.

20) Reading online articles on relationships or science or … provides you with information you can share and then translate to writingnovels. I do that a good bit.

21) What are the steps in indie publishing? How does one get started? What are the most important considerations?

22) Choose a category, like food, and do a post a day for one month. In February, I do a recipe a day, which is pretty easy to put together. I’ve done soup, chicken, and appetizers. I’ll let my readers vote on the category for the upcoming February.

23) Explore an aspect of your own life and how a situationis impacting you. I did a series on my mother after her sudden death in September.

24) Share an excerpt from a novel of you are writing. Explain some background and just paste in the excerpt.

25) Become an expert or exploit your expertise to create blog topics like Fiona Quinn does at thrillwriting.blogspot.com or http://forensicoutreach.com/ or http://historysleuth.blogspot.com/

26) Invite others to guest post on your blog. First, set up guidelines you can communicate at the beginning so they know what kinds of topics, how many words, what media you can use, and what kind of links you’ll promote.

27) Do a post of links to blogs you regularly read and/or posts you found engaging and why.

28) What is happening in magazines or newspapers you read that got your attention? What is your perspective on it? Think of this as an extended “letter to the editor”.

29) What genre(s) do you write? What are the elements of the genre(s)? Describe those elements so others can write them, too.

30) Select a quotation that means a lot to you. Write about what it is and why it matters. This can be in your life or in your writing.

31) What writers do you regularly read and why? What is it about their writing that keeps you engaged?

And you know? There are bunches more ideas! I hope you’ll add to this list below. And, more importantly, I hope I shared some ideas for helping you keep at that blog.