Coming up with an Idea
LIke I said yesterday -I’m super excited about this week! If you did all three weeks of assignments, YAY YOU!
I’m proud of you for priming the pump yesterday. Did you get all sorts of things on paper? Are you ready to come up with an idea for an article?
How do you come up with an idea for an article?
The best way to come up with an idea for an article is to find something you struggle with yourself. Your topic can be something you have overcome (even if you have setbacks) or something you want to overcome publicly, such as a health challenge. If you think all the people who write about time management never struggled with it themselves, you’re wrong. Most people write, teach, or speak about struggles they have overcome, not practices they have always been perfectly performing. So, if you are thinking, I can’t write about anything because I have too many problems. Problems are the inception of overcoming. If you have nothing to overcome, you can’t be an overcomer.
Here’s one way to find a topic:
Look through your journal. Find something you have written about a lot. One reoccurring theme in my journal when I had seven kiddos at home was my rising early for morning prayer time. I wrote about it a lot. I prayed about it a lot. I wrote down scriptures. It became a huge “overcoming” project.
Do I get up early now? Yes, I usually get up at 5 am to pray, study the Bible and then write. Do I do it perfectly well every day? Nope. Do I do it well most of the time? Yep. Was it a struggle for me. Totally. I cried big hot tears on the days I missed my Bible and prayer time. It was a need for me that I had the power to meet and didn’t many times. Would I consider myself an overcomer in this area? Yes! Did I do it myself? No, way. I am only able to do what I do because I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency.
What’s one thing you have struggled with?
Find something in your journal or think about something you have talked about to your friends a lot. It doesn’t have to be theologically deep. Maybe it’s like (one of my examples) making breakfast, or giving up drinking soda, or doing something fun with your family once a week. Ruth Soukup calls this your “felt need.” Guess what, if you feel it, then someone else out there does too!
Once you narrow down what felt need you’re going to explore in your blog post, then it’s time to give practical, and easy to follow, advice addressing and hopefully solving that need. If your post gets them closer to their desired result, then they will remember you forever as an expert of the topic at hand. The thing is, learning something is what drives people to read blog posts in the first place, so why not entertain but also educate your readers at the same time. Doling out easy-to-follow, practical advice, that addresses your readers felt need is just one element each post needs to incorporate.
– Ruth Soukup
Is your brain working now? Has an idea popped into your head? Once you have something in your head, write it down. Write down all the thoughts you have about it whether it flows or makes sense or not. Do a complete brain dump!