Ensuring I Don’t Run Out Of Ideas For Writing – substack.com

How I’m planning to write for the long term

I’ve been struggling lately to come up with ideas to write about.

Ever since I started blogging in August 2023, most of my articles were based on things I already knew to a fair extent.

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The ideas and concepts I based my opinions and observations on weren’t exactly new to me. I’d already been exposed to them mainly via:

• My own experiences in social work, campaigns, etc.

• Discussions with my parents, who are well-versed in social work and class-based analyses.

• Certain geopolitical discussion channels on YouTube.

The problem is, I can only repeat similar opinions so many times about the same core concepts and topics without it becoming stale and uninteresting.

Very little consumption of general knowledge

For over this past year, I’ve been consuming information on mostly the same topics/issues, namely geopolitics.

I didn’t bother learning and reading about other things to increase my general knowledge and awareness. I even stopped reading newspapers as I was fed up with all the same local political crap and the propaganda concerning global news.

The main reasons for this were:

• My focus and concentration are generally poor. Hence, consuming knowledge and learning is a real struggle!

• I became too fixated on rapidly growing my blog to start earning a decent amount of income. Despite realizing my goals were irrational, I had big financial insecurities so I dedicated most of my time and energy daily towards blogging.

Consistently gaining information is crucial for writers

But looking back now, I realize not allocating ANY time for reading and expanding my general knowledge was a mistake!

As writers, the only real way we can sustain our writing (especially for the long term) is if we consistently have new, interesting things to write about. Writing about the same old topics and issues, and repeatedly sharing the same opinions isn’t gonna help us gain many readers as well as retain our current ones.

This is why for the past week, I’ve tried incorporating more newspaper reading into my daily routine.

I figured I’d better start with newspapers as the articles aren’t that long. I’m specifically reading the editorial and business sections. It’s a struggle to get my mind to slow down enough to read even two articles a day….but I’m trying to settle into a routine as best I can and make sure I’m consistent.

Apart from newspapers, I’m also interested in checking out opinion pieces from online news media and magazines. These sources too can be useful for providing general knowledge and thought-provoking content.

Eventually, as I get more used to and patient towards reading such content, I’ll start reading non-fiction books. As it is, I’ve got a few books that I’ve had for quite some time but haven’t started reading yet!

So far, my mind’s rejecting efforts to spend less time and energy on blogging and more towards reading instead. But I’m determined to keep trying and read more consistently each day.

It’s the only way to ensure I gain more knowledge, ideas, and insights to write about consistently for the long term. This is how I can help sustain my writing journey and prevent my content from getting too stale, repetitive and/or irrelevant.

For those of you who are writers/bloggers, how do you ensure you have a decent amount of ideas or topics to write about for the long term?

Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading!

Copyright Raveen Jeyakumar, 2024. All rights reserved.

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