Blogging ideas habits
Whenever I have an idea that I think may be worth blogging about, I quickly login to this blog and create a draft with a very short description of the idea as the title (and no post body). Then, later on, when I have free time and feel like writing something, I look through the drafts, pick an idea I feel like writing about, and fill in the post body. Then the last step is choosing a better post title, but I forget to do that on occasion. As an homage to my blogging ideas generation technique, I’m not modifying this post’s title from the original saved idea.
It occurs to me, though, that I could turn my writing process completely on its head. Rather than thinking of the idea and then writing a short phrase to help me remember it by, why not write the short phrase first (maybe even pick it at random), and then expand it into a complete idea? Just looking at my saved ideas now, some of them are very ambiguous if you don’t know what I was thinking of when I wrote them down. Here’s a sampling: Dolphins, Ted, Traveling, Planned spontaneity, and Good planning.
I figure I should try running a random word generator to come up with some ideas, and then try expanding them into full posts. You wouldn’t know it, but the Dolphins post idea I referenced above stems from a trip to the beach I took in late June when we went out on a powerboat in the Atlantic Ocean and were surrounded by dolphins. I’ll get around to blogging about that eventually. But in the mean time, what if I pick a random animal, say, kiwi, and try to base a blog post off of that, by letting title determine content rather than the other way around?
Keep your eyes pealed. Who knows, I might write about kiwis. First I’ll have to go do some research on them, though.
September 9th, 2007 at 23:07
I’ve always wondered if it’s a coincidence that kiwis look like kiwis. The bird and the fruit, respectively.
That always disturbed me a little when eating kiwifruit.