If you want to write, but are stuck, look in the most obvious places for ideas. In this series, I’ll show you how you can derive ideas and inspiration from everyday things around you and from your life.
Newspapers are one of my favourite places for inspiration. Forget about the lead stories (those are good too, but turn the page for now). Look for anything that intrigues you or makes you want to read beyond the first paragraph. Clip out everything that stands out - articles, features, advertisements. If reading something makes you say “I could write about that!”, then there’s an idea.
You can take an idea from a newspaper article and expand on it for another publication. Do your own independent research, get your own experts, find your own case studies.
I tear out interesting articles from newspapers and store them by subject in (used) manila folders. These I label by subject. So, for example, I have envelopes on Interiors, Fashion & Art, Writing (includes writers, books & literature), Human Rights, Education & Learning and Travel. Every time I find something of similar interest, it goes into one of these envelopes. The next time I feel the dreaded lazy-bug looming, I can just go through my pile and discover something interesting.
The spin-off is that you need not write about the same article. The story could give you ideas for other articles. If you’ve seen an article about ‘10 child-friendly museums in London’, you can use that and write ‘5 museums to visit in London’ and target them to specific audiences that might need information on places attentive to their needs. Examples would be a magazine for the elderly or the disabled.
Yesterday’s news may be stale news, but the ideas lingering in a newspaper remain fresh for a long time after. Before you throw those papers out, take a quick look for any clippings. Then recycle - the paper and the ideas.
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