Tim Smith

Remember when you first launched your blog? Your ideas were flowing and inspiration was oozing from you into your articles. In fact, they pretty much wrote themselves. You had so many articles in reserve; you didn’t know what to do with them. You felt on top of the world.

Fast forward a year. Maybe even less. Now, things are different. You notice that you don’t want to write. Your articles aren’t as good as they used to be and comments on your blog have decreased because your readers notice it too. What can you do to change this feeling?

Take a Break

Writing shouldn’t be forced. If you’re not feeling it, don’t do it. When you force yourself to write content for your blog, most often than not, you’ll find yourself producing mediocre articles. It turns blogging into a chore, instead of being a way to express your creativity or speak well of a topic you’re fond of. Keep the following in mind: Forced content will not be beneficial to your readers. Therefore, there’s no point in publishing it.

What can you do instead? How about asking a blogging buddy for a guest post? This can be a great way to take a break and have some “cross pollination”.

Another idea is to take a walk. I know this idea is repeated on many blogs. The reason is because it works. Take a walk. Do it. You’ll notice the change of activity will help you out a lot.

The key is to change the pace of your day. It’s often those random activities that you carry out that make the ideas start to flow.

Change Where You Write

I don’t mean to change the way you write. You may have your own method that works for you and that you feel comfortable with. For example, I always outline an article before I write it. I feel comfortable with that method. I believe it allows me to organize my thoughts in a structured manner. However, I do change where I write and that’s my suggestion to you.

You could take some time and write at your favorite coffee shop. If you’re close to a body of water like I am, how about writing there? That’s the beauty of blogging: it can be done from anywhere.

Refine Your Brainstorming Method

I can’t really take credit for this brainstorming method because I learned it from Darren Rowse of Problogger.net. What you do is simple. First, you write the category that you’d like to write about. Second, you write down the sub-category that will usually refine the topics that you can think about. Then, you write ideas of topics that would fit into the category. Simple right?

The fact is, that you have a lot of ideas. Most of us do. The challenge is learning how to think of them. When your brainstorming method is efficient, you’ll find that ideas will come to you faster.

Let’s say that you have a blog about food. You don’t know what to write about so you use the method above. You go from a general topic like food to dessert and then frozen dessert. Now you have a narrow topic to talk about, making the writing process a lot easier.

Final Words

In conclusion, don’t think that you’re the only one that has gone through a blogging drought. There are only two types of bloggers: the ones that have had a blogging drought and those who will have one.

What about you? What have you done to get your articles back into shape? Any other suggestions that you would add?