How I get ideas
Somewhere there’s a method to my madness, I’m sure of it
At my day job, and here on Medium occasionally, I write “stuff.” I put stuff in quotes because on any given day I might be ghostwriting a post for someone, ad copy for Facebook , one pager for Sales, or even in-case-of-emergency-questions for a webinar. It’s varied. It’s often rushed and even more often, off-the-cuff last and at the last possible minute.
And people ask me how I do it. People ask me how I come up with ideas for posts, questions, ads, and taglines. I usually tell them “practice, lots of practice. Which is true, but only to a point. Because practice alone doesn’t account for the most important part of writing—the ideas. Beyond the occasional bolt from the blue idea, coming up with ideas isn’t magic at all.
Here’s how I do it.
Read a metric crap ton every single day
The best writers (I’m not one of those) will tell you that you need to read 2–3x the amount you write (I absolutely say this). I pay for Medium. I pour over Refind (bonus that’s an invite link) obsessively. I’m even one of those RSS stalwarts who blasts through a few hundred sources in Feedly.
Reading, in case you hadn’t figured out, doesn’t just expose you to new ideas, reading exposes you to new connections between ideas. How could AI be related to art and design? (Patterns people, AI digs patterns) How could self-driving cars be part of marketing? (Think about what you’ll be doing while you’re not driving). Connections are electric. Ideas are born and explode from those sparks.
But if you don’t read, if you don’t feed the brain beast; you’re missing out.
What do you ask?
The best writing ideas start with questions. Questions people ask you about your job. Questions you have about your job (not why you’re still working there). Start with “what if…” and keep going. Or in the case of this post I answered my own question, “just how do I come up with ideas…”.
Good questions are wondrous gifts for writers. They are so good I wish you could buy them like enhancement packs in Candy Crush. Imagine… “Special today, three questions that will lead to six posts and the special writer’s block hammer to bust through the worst stuck posts. Only $100…” Who wouldn’t buy that?
I interview people often. Usually for marketing-related things like value propositions and product-market fit studies, but those questions fuel answers that fuel words. You know you’re onto something cool when you ask a question you get that pause and “hmm” and another pause and finally, “that’s a great question…” Those answers are gold. Listen up bucko cause you’re about to have a post (nearly) written for you.
Wandering, wondering, and wording
While arcane spells, selling of souls, or other nasty stuff could work to get more ideas, this post came from me thinking about the last post I wrote and then thinking about how I used that post to break out of some writer’s block which lead me…
You get the idea.
We’re writers for Pete’s sake. Letting our minds wander is an occupational hazard; enjoy it! Sit back, close your eyes, and just…go. Go to that place where dragons fly, magic is real, and everyone has little leather bound notebooks where they scribble amazing thoughts with pencil stubs. It’s the daydreaming of the possible that brings the fantastical. Those ideas that you better darn hope you have that notebook handy to scribble in, because they are awesome.
There is a good reason that great writers (and scientists and other geniuses) walk and wander. They let their minds go to a place where bolts from the blue can happen. You just have to amble a bit to get there. Even if that ambling is only on the couch watching the clouds go by.
This is nice and all, but I write business content
Yeah, so do I. Thousands and thousands of posts worth. Four books worth. I write nonfiction, business content. That’s my job and I’m good at it. And while writing fiction is something I dabble in, nonfiction is my bread and butter. Business content is hard to write. You have to inform. You have to teach.
You have to stick to the bounds of reality.
You can’t very well suggest that your sales people cast spells to close deals. You can’t say that your Facebook marketing strategy should be driven by what the faeries who live in your office tell you. The imagination part of business writing is making the real world amazing. That’s why working on ideas for business content is so much harder. That’s why I spend a lot of time reading other business writers as well as the fun stuff. That’s why I use whiteboards to map out my thoughts. That’s one of the reasons why I started writing this post in the first place.
Business content ideas must be grounded in reality or they just don’t work.
Nurture ideas and don’t let them slip away
Oh and the whole notebook thing? After forgetting yet another post idea — and first paragraph — I started carrying around a Field Notes notebook in my back pocket and a Fisher Space Pen all the time. No more “Oh I’ll remember that idea…” I write those suckers down, in ink, and come back to them later.
Where are your ideas from? What brings your muse to your shoulder and whisper in your ear?
Where do you find your words?
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