Facibus On Blogging

It is inevitable that every blog about blogging has to have a post on blogger’s block - the inability to find new things to write about and to actually write about them. Darren Rowse wrote a wonderful post on battling blogger’s block that is full of ideas.

I would add the following:

• keep your ideas journal close to hand: I use a Nokia e61 mobile phone as both ebook reader and ideas log. It is fairly complicated - when I think of something, I email it to my gmail account, using a keyword in the title that gmail recognises as a tag so I can retrieve it later.
• Darren sort of covers this one anyway, but I will make it explicit: cultivate some blogging friends, either online or off, and discuss ideas with them - get them talking about what they’re into at the moment, regardless of whether it is a movie they saw yesterday or the problems they’re having at work - any interaction might help you generate ideas.
• Read Seth Godin’s book Free Prize Inside and learn about egdecraft. Edgecraft is not just flipping an idea on its head, but going right out the far side of reason and normality in the pursuit of the concept - how far can you get from the way that you would normally think without actually crossing the line into impropriety?
• In any sort of free-association/brainstorming/mindmapping around concept generation, leave no stone unturned - don’t just embrace Chaos, have a deep and meaningful relationship with her
• Walk into a bookstore and just browse for half an hour - even those parts that you would not normally go near - and select books at random and read the cover notes.
• Write a list of every hobby and passion that you have ever had onto sticky notes and randomly place them together. What is the intersection of cake decoration and organic farming? How does breeding goldfish relate to whale-watching? It is a funny thing, thinking back myself - I’ve applied the principles of Permaculture to Information Architecture, how could they be applied to blogging? To running a small business? To consulting in large organisations?

If you can think of anything that I’ve missed, and it isn’t in Darren’s wonderful list (or even if it is! You might have a new take on it or a specific technique to make it work), please leave me a comment.

Blogger’s block can stop you from getting your best ideas out there. Luckily there’s free web hosting to support your blog if you’re not good about updating it. You can find free or cheap hosting for under $10, so check out cheap domain registration prices online.