{"id":5141,"date":"2010-03-04T07:00:39","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T13:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=5141"},"modified":"2010-03-04T09:56:24","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T15:56:24","slug":"what-should-i-blog-about-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/what-should-i-blog-about-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Answering the question :: What should I blog about?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-content\/uploads\/newpost.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-content\/uploads\/newpost-500x304.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"newpost\" width=\"500\" height=\"304\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-5143\" srcset=\"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-content\/uploads\/newpost-500x304.jpg 500w, http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-content\/uploads\/newpost.jpg 776w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have several friends (and family members) with blogs that get updated <em>somewhat<\/em> frequently. Others are far more occasional, and still others, I have to wonder if they&#8217;ve forgotten their password.<\/p>\n<p>When I ask them about it, their usual response is, &#8220;Well I don&#8217;t know what to write about.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I understand, I&#8217;ve had writer&#8217;s block before. <\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s one thing I&#8217;ve found that gets me over my writer&#8217;s block every time &#8212; <strong>writing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>I know you&#8217;re all looking at me funny now but perhaps I can explain.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nIn my college journalism class we had a practice we&#8217;d start each class with &#8212; 10 minutes of writing about <em>anything<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It didn&#8217;t have to be a lengthy prose, it didn&#8217;t have to be publication worthy, it could be fictional, non-fiction, prose, poetry, whatever &#8212; it was just the practice of writing that helped get our muse going and get our minds thinking.<\/p>\n<p>While most of what I wrote was usually junk that was trashed as soon as the practice was over, I also ended up with several good columns out of the process as well.<\/p>\n<p>The practice still works today. <\/p>\n<p>In fact, one of the reasons I was able to finish <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stpetersbrewery.info\">my novel<\/a> in a month was because I simply wrote. I didn&#8217;t focus on re-thinking or editing during the process, I just wrote. <\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s plenty of time for editing once you&#8217;re finished.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So for starters &#8212; just write.<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>Not only will it get your creative juices flowing but it may turn out being something worth publishing (or at least a starting point for something in the future). <\/p>\n<p>And if that doesn&#8217;t get your blogging juices flowing, I&#8217;ve also put together a list of some other great starting points for your next blog post:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Share a funny story that happened today (kids are great sources of this)<\/li>\n<li>Something you liked about your favorite TV show<\/li>\n<li>Something you disliked about your favorite TV show<\/li>\n<li>Politics (always a hot topic)<\/li>\n<li>Professional wrestling &#8211; you may laugh but I always get a lot of visits from Google when I write new posts about wrestling. Even if you don&#8217;t like wrestling do a quick scan of WWE.com or TNAWrestling.com and figure out how to work in the name of a couple of the wrestlers mentioned on the front page, like The Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, AJ Styles or Kurt Angle, and see how many visits you get from it :-).<\/li>\n<li>What you love about your favorite restaurant<\/li>\n<li>A favorite recipe<\/li>\n<li>Mindmap your past posts. This idea comes from Darren Reeves and his e-book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.e-junkie.com\/ecom\/gb.php?ii=258839&#038;c=ib&#038;aff=33760&#038;cl=11220\">31 Days to Building a Better Blog<\/a>. Make a list of your most recent posts and then brainstorm all ways that the post could be extended into other posts. This is your chance to think outside the box.\n<ul>\n<li>Take the opposite approach to an issue<\/li>\n<li>Explore an idea or suggestion someone may have made in the comments of the original post<\/li>\n<li>If you shared a story, offer an alternative ending (fictional or not)<\/li>\n<li>Offer an alternative &#8220;how-to&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I recently did this with my post, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/faith\/how-i-found-heaven-at-what-a-burger-hint-its-in-me\/\">How I found Heaven at What-A-Burger<\/a>:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-content\/uploads\/heaven.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-content\/uploads\/heaven.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"heaven\" width=\"450\" height=\"282\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-5146\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nGranted, I may not write or publish all of these ideas, but it&#8217;s a great resource of ideas.<br \/>\nSee how many posts you can get out of your original one and then start writing as the ideas come flowing in (hint: don&#8217;t post the posts all at once &#8212; schedule them for several weeks out).<\/li>\n<li>Pick a topic and write a series of posts on the topic. If you can find a list of something you&#8217;re interested in, blog about each point on the list. I&#8217;m doing this with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.welivesimply.info\/tag\/simple-manifesto\/\">Simple Living Manifesto<\/a> over on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.welivesimply.info\">We Live Simply<\/a>. Simply blogging each point in the manifesto, I have 72 posts (which will last me through the middle of June 2010). And that doesn&#8217;t include mind-mapping each of those 72 posts either.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course, while these ideas have helped me &#8212; but they may not be your cup of tea. <\/p>\n<p><strong>So what about you? Where do you get ideas for your next blog post?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have several friends (and family members) with blogs that get updated somewhat frequently. Others are far more occasional, and still others, I have to wonder if they&#8217;ve forgotten their password. When I ask them about it, their usual response is, &#8220;Well I don&#8217;t know what to write about.&#8221; I understand, I&#8217;ve had writer&#8217;s block &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/what-should-i-blog-about-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Answering the question :: What should I blog about?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[1408,422,1223,3104,3103,616,1184,322],"class_list":["post-5141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","category-techno","tag-blogging","tag-blogs","tag-ideas","tag-mindmap","tag-practice","tag-themes","tag-wordpress","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-1kV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}