You love the subjects you write about, but you’ve started to feel a little stale. The topics seem the same and you wonder if you’re rehashing the same old principles and viewpoints over and over. If you’re a niche writer, it may be time to explore other areas. Or you may just need to refresh your perspective by expanding your sources of information.
Here are a few strategies that will help add some new elements to your writing subject, maybe even open new writing opportunities:
1. Set up Google Alerts on subjects that interest you – The alerts will give you a perspective on the subjects and maybe prompt some creative ideas.
As the alerts are culled from a variety of publications, in numerous countries, you gain an international perspective, rather than just a local one, which opens new ways of thinking for you.
2. Subscribe to PR distribution services- This will give you news and views on events happening in your areas of interest. Those events and views that strike your imagination may end up as strong, marketable articles, helping your jumpstart your new direction.
3 Attend exhibitions and fairs – You’ll learn more about the subject, meet interesting people and maybe even come out with some interesting ideas. Or you may decide that the subject area does not fire your imagination a much as you hoped it would.
4. Experiment with writing forms – Write a different type of article on the same subject you have covered before/ write for an audience you haven’t written for before. For example, if you write mostly parenting web content, why not consider doing an article for a print parenting magazine? Or write a short story, with well-developed characters, instead of a personal essay, and watch the story grow beyond your experience and the characters gain a life of their own.
5. Look closely at your environment – Don’t underestimate the scope of information you’re exposed to on a daily basis, which you may be neglecting because you are very used to it. For example, I’m a business journalist and children’s writer. I regularly go out to restaurants and hotels to attend media briefings and / interview people. This opens up new opportunities for me to look into reviewing restaurants, writing about food or profiling chefs if I was so inclined. Or I could make a list of 20 child entertainment facilities in my city, take Baby and her friends to everyone of them, and review them for publications.
Subscribe to Damaria Senne’s parenting/writing blog at http://damariasenne.blogspot.com Read her business articles at http://www.itweb.co.za
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