Easy Ways to Get More Article Ideas

It seems like people who are new to freelancing or thinking about starting on the freelancing journey often have a big worry about whether they’ll be able to consistently come up with ideas for things to write about. Those of us who have been in the biz a bit longer know we have more ideas than we can possibly write about, but if you’re still in the camp of worrying about where you next idea is going to come from, here are three quick ideas that will help you find ideas fast.

5 Things in Every Room

First off, every time you go into a new room or go to a new place through your day, come up with five article ideas based on where you are or the items in that room. For example, in the bathroom you might think of:

• How to remodel on a budget
• Is there such a thing as natural perfume?
• How to clean tile floors
• Remedies for dry skin
• The easy way to get and keep your shower clean

If you went to the library, you might try:

• Librarian recommendations for summer reading
• Are library donations hurting in this economy?
• Free activities at the library
• Using the library to save money (rent movies and exercise videos for free instead of using Netflix or going to the gym, for example)
• A personal essay about sharing the love of reading with a younger generation

Those are just off the top of my head; if you spend a little more time thinking you’ll probably come up with better ideas.

Bouncing Ideas

Of course you’d never want to query the same idea that you’ve seen another writer use, but you can use magazines and newspapers you read as jumping off points for your own article ideas. For instance, an article in a writing magazine about eco-friendly markets made me consider an article about green crafting websites.

Reading an article about saving money when packing lunches for the kids might inspire you to write something about brown bagging for grownups, or a story in your local newspaper might have broader implications you think you could explore in an article for a publication with a wider audience.

Each time you sit down to read a magazine or newspaper, keep some paper handy and jot down notes on potential articles you could write.

What do You Want to Know?

There’s a saying in writing that you should write what you know, but I think another good tactic is to write what you want to know. If you’re interested in a subject, odds are good other people will be, too, and as you learn more you can share that knowledge with other people who might be new to the subject as well.

Try keeping track of the topics you search for in your web browser for a week. Some of the things you’re searching for might be good fodder for articles.

Keeping up with Your Reading

It may have something to do with being a writer more than in other industries, but it seems to me like there’s a never-ending, ever-growing pile of things to read (and a virtual pile of ebooks, articles and other documents on my computer) on a variety of subjects.

I have to stay up on the topics I write about, of course (and so do you), which for me means reading knitting books and magazines, health magazines and articles on my news reader, articles and books on promotion, freelance writing, social networking and solo/home businesses, just to name a few of the things that come into my office on a daily basis.

Some days it feels impossible to keep up. I’m barely able to get through my daily e-mail, let alone anything extra. But there are some things you can try that might make these days fewer and farther between while helping you deal with the flood of words you need to look at.

Getting through your to read list

• Be realistic. Your reading pile didn’t get this big overnight; you’re not going to be able to get rid of it in a day or even a week. But with regular attention you can regain control.
• Be ruthless. Get rid of magazines, newspaper and articles to read that are more than six months old unless you have a really good reason to keep them. Things more than three months old, you’re allowed to skim, but don’t try to read cover to cover. You might not feel like you can just ignore books, but be willing to if the advice is likely to be outdated
• Be consistent. Take 15 or 20 minutes a day to cull your reading pile until you’re mostly caught up with periodicals. Then use that time to keep the pile under control by reading e-mail newsletters or paper magazines you otherwise wouldn’t get to in your day.
• One a week. I’ve gotten pretty good at reading at least one knitting-related book each week (most of them don’t have a lot of words, so it just takes an evening or a couple of days), and I’d like to get to the point where I’m reading a health book every week or two and perhaps a career-related book on alternate weeks. That’s on top of reading for pleasure. I do this by reading before I go to bed and before I get out of bed in the morning, but you could also plan to read at lunch or some other time during the day.
• Be willing to let things go. There’s so much information out there in the world that it’s impossible to read it all. Even if you’re just covering a couple of niches, there will always be more that you want to read than you will have time to read. Try to decide which publications, authors and subjects are most important for you to focus on and let other things slide.
• Don’t buy every ebook ever published. I have a real problem with liking the idea behind an ebook, buying it, then reading the first chapter or two and never finishing it. I need to try the 15 minute reading rule on these electronic documents now that my paper is more under control, and in the future I need to remember that I should only buy books that have an interesting point of view or tackle a topic I haven’t seen covered before.

How do you deal with the to read pile or all the documents on your computer you’ve been meaning to read? I’d love to hear your hints.

Dealing with Paperwork

Remember when people always talked about the paperless office? The idea was that computers and the Internet were going to eliminate the need for paper, because everything would be done electronically, which would be more efficient and better for the planet.

I wish that it were so! While I rarely use my printer, my office is far from lacking in paper (same with the offices I most recently worked in: a book publisher and a newspaper). There are always magazines that need to be read, bills to deal with, catalogs to ponder, books to read and the never-ending to-do list, all of which involve paper that takes up space and needs to be dealt with.

I realized the gravity of the paper situation in my office over the weekend (not for the first time) when I realized how many magazines I had all over the place. Two of the topics I write about most are knitting and health, and I stay on top of those fields by subscribing to lots of magazines, all of which I intend to read but end up piling up.

And when I do look through them I rip out pages, pictures of interesting knitwear designs, writeups of websites I want to check out or books I might like to review and so on. But I let all these papers just pile up without any real way of organizing them.

How I organized my papers

I decided I needed to organize these things in a way that was logical, simple and that I’d actually use to file more papers in the future. My knitting pile got divided into five piles: inspiration, patterns I like from other designers, reference and how-to articles, websites or products to check out and notes and ideas for my own patterns.

All of these files ended up in one big hanging folder so I can pull out the whole bunch if I want or go inside and get just the file I need. I intend to go through these files regularly and add to them when I go through the new magazines each month.

My health-related articles all went into one folder because there are fewer of them, but they could be divided similarly into websites to visit, topics to research and so on.

Any paper like this that you want to keep but need to keep organized can be arranged in a similar way. Just think of some categories that make sense to you and promise that you’ll go through the files once a month or at least quarterly to get rid of old information.

Combined with a basic filing system for financial paperwork, this simple system helped me, and should help you, to get a lot of visual clutter out of the way. And since visual clutter and mental clutter have a lot in common, it should only help your productivity to take some time out to do this.

The Freelancer’s Manifesto

I’ve never actually written a manifesto, but I like the idea of having firmly held beliefs that are so much a part of you that you have to commit them to paper.

Diagram junkie Girls Can Tell recently published her manifesto for the self employed, and I heartily agree with it. Some of my favorite points:

if you’d rather be making a living doing something else, you probably should be doing something else (anything else, really).

and

if what you want to do was easy, everyone would do it. challenges are important.

Both of these things are really important to remember when embarking on (or going through a rough patch in) your home business. Most people I know who work from home do so because they can’t imagine themselves doing anything else, because what they were doing before was making them so unhappy (and I can completely relate to that).

But it’s also important to remember that just because you want it doesn’t mean it’s always going to be easy.

The Freelance Writer’s Manifesto

Just for fun I think I’ll try to write my own manifesto specifically for freelance writers and other creative types.

• We do this because we love it and can’t imagine any other way to live. If you tried to put us back in a regular nine-to-five day job environment, it would probably kill us.
• We love listening to our own words, but we love listening to other people even more, telling their stories and sharing their experiences.
• We want to help people.
• We believe that we can enjoy what we do and get paid well for it. There are no starving artists here.
• We know that, even though in the beginning we have less time and energy for our family and friends, in the end making this choice is better for them, because they get to live with/experience someone who’s really happy and enjoys going to work every day.
• Well, maybe not every day, but most days we enjoy going to work.
• We love dynamism and change. We need freedom of movement, of thought and of scheduling.
• We really love that we can take three hour lunches when we want or stay in our pajamas half the day, but we don’t do either very often.
• We hope that our example of loving what we do and being excited to continue working will rub off on other people who might be inspired to try what they love because of our example.
• We are passionately supportive of each other and will do whatever we can to help someone else in a similar situation or someone who is where we used to be.

What else? This is just a quick list off the top of my head; I’m sure there’s more and I’d love to hear your additions.

The Beauty of Saturday

As much as possible, I don’t work on Saturdays. Of course I will if I’m behind or have a deadline I’m not going to be able to meet in any other way, but for the most part, Saturday is my day off. Lately I’ve been doing as little as possible on Saturdays, often spending my mornings playing with my cats, having a leisurely breakfast with my husband and spending the morning reading magazines (market research, right?).

I think it’s vitally important to have some time in your schedule that you know is strictly not for working. This can be really hard when you’re working away from home and trying to build your freelance business at the same time. Believe me, I’ve been there. I remember (though thankfully not very clearly anymore) days of working, sneaking in freelance work at my day job, coming home and working more, plus whatever time I could spare on the weekends.

It’s necessary to take the time to build your business and do the work that needs to be done, but there has to be, not even a balance, but a sliver of time that’s just yours, when you’re not worrying about either of your jobs as much as possible.

If you can’t take a whole day right now, at least try to carve out a morning or afternoon, preferably on the weekend when your family is around, to disconnect from the computer and tune out the voice in your head that wants to compose query letters (or at least scribble down its notes as quickly as possible, and use paper rather than running to the computer).

Why you need a day off

Taking a little time away from your business — as long as you really can stop worrying about what’s going on when you’re not on Twitter and don’t have your e-mail constantly refreshing in the background — is vital to your mental health and the health of your relationships.

Getting away will keep you from getting burned out and may keep you remembering that the business you’re trying to build is supposed to be fun, not a chore.

Of course actually getting to see your family and friends occasionally when you aren’t working is a big bonus both for them and for you. You may be able to limit distractions from friends who call or drop by during the week if they know you’ll have time and be in a better mood for them on the weekend.

Best yet, recharging your batteries will help remind you why you’re doing all this hard work in the first place. The idea is that one day you’ll have more time, not less, and you’ll be able to spend more time with family and friends doing the things you love together.

It might just be a few hours now, but with hard work and persistence you’ll be making more money and have more time to devote to those things you love outside of your business. And that’s really what it’s all about.

Avoiding Freelancing Scams

One of the really difficult things about starting out as a freelancer is that there are so many opportunities that seem great on the surface but turn out to be anything but. I have to admit that I got sucked into a few projects I regret, because the promise of payment was never fulfilled or the client stopped paying me long before I stopped doing work for them.

I don’t know if everyone who freelances has similar stories, or if that’s a necessary growing stage of becoming a professional freelancer, but it sure seems like most people have had deadbeat clients and great opportunities that turned to dust around them.

The good news for people starting out today is that there are a lot of us who’ve been burned by various scams and who can provide sage advice about avoiding those problems yourself. Five such tips were provided in a recent article by Jen Nipps at Tutorial Blog.

In summary, she advises skipping ads that require you to pay to get more information about a job, jobs that have vague information, those that promise big results with no experience and ads that come unsolicited into your email box.

Perhaps the most important rule she mentions, though, is that if something sounds too good to be true, run the other direction.

My scam-avoiding tips

I have a few ideas of my own to add to the list, including being wary of ads that have vague contact information, like those anonymous ads on CraigsList (not always bad, but proceed with caution); any opportunity, including job boards, where you have to pay for the promise of maybe getting some work; ads for new websites that promise a share of advertising revenue (they probably aren’t making much if anything on their ads as it is); and anything that makes you feel uncomfortable.

You might also want to add these other red flags to your list:

• Publications that say they pay “in exposure,” especially when they’re startups you’ve never heard of
• Publications that say they can’t pay right now but hope to in the future (or that pay next to nothing now but promise a pay raise after a certain period)
• Ads that require a previously unpublished sample (the site may be taking all those sample, publishing them and never paying anyone)

I’m sure there are more, and I’d love to hear your additions to the list. And if you’ve got a bad feeling about a publication you’re thinking about working with (or even if you don’t), check them out at Writers Weekly and/or Preditors and Editors to see if any other writers have had problems with that particular company.

One of the great things about the community of freelancers is that when one person gets wronged, they usually don’t stay silent. This way we can all learn who to stay away from and keep our careers as successful as possible.

Can You Afford a Freelance Writing Career?

It’s not obvious how young writers without accommodating, well-to-do parents or a trust from gramps make it these days. Surely they can’t spend a year or two blogging without pay until an audience evolves to nurture them. They’ll starve. Meantime, freelance rates for non-fluff magazine writing have barely risen in the past 15 years. And the chances of getting a job at a quality newspaper or a serious magazine are fast approaching zero.

That’s a statement from Francis Wilkinson, executive editor of The Week, in his commentary “Is Writing for the Rich?” He notes that there have always been people willing to write for free, and often those people were famous, well-credentialed people who otherwise could have been charging for their words.

With the situation at newspapers and magazines getting more dire by the day, and an ever-increasing number of websites seeking writers without payment (or with the shady promise of a cut of ad revenue, which isn’t so great these days, either) it seems nearly impossible to make a living — not even to say a good living — through the use of your words.

Wilkinson wonders why anyone would pay some unknown kid when “names” will write for free. It’s a good question, but the truth is there are still people out there who are willing to do it.

I speak from experience when I tell you that it is possible to devote your life to writing, even without a trust fund or an independently wealthy spouse (though I’ll also admit having a working spouse whose health insurance I can use does make things easier).

How to be a Freelancer

Of course that doesn’t mean it’s easy or that it will happen overnight. It takes persistence and consistency, putting yourself out there again and again in as many places and covering as many topics as you can. It takes looking for bigger, regular opportunities in addition to well-paying one shots.

It takes a lot of hard work, discipline, patience, tenacity, confidence, creativity, skill, support, not to mention maybe a few lucky breaks, meeting the right people with the right needs at the right time (that’s certainly been a big part of getting my career to where it is today).

But the point is you shouldn’t be discouraged by all the opportunities that don’t work out, the otherwise perfect seeming publications that don’t pay and the times when it seems like nothing is ever going to work and you’re never going to be a success.

It is. You will. As long as you keep trying, stay focused on your goal, and don’t let people who say “writing is only for the rich” or “writing is only for people with degrees” or some other nonsense stop you.

Getting Control of Your Inbox

I have many, many different e-mail accounts. One of them I have open almost all the time when I’m on the computer, another is open frequently and others I check less often. I’m ashamed to say I have a couple of accounts that I almost never check, but they’re not business related and are almost always clogged up with spam.

It’s been a longtime goal of mine to get my various inboxes down to or as close to zero messages as I can. My Gmail account stands at 47 in the inbox, though I have a lot of folders that need cleaning out as well. One of my other frequently used inboxes has 60 messages, but also a “take action” folder on which no action has been taken for a good long time.

I’m pretty good about answering e-mails that need attention, less good at taking action on things that don’t need an immediate response. But I want to do better, and I know I’m not the only one in the business world who feels that way.

A recent article in the New York Times looked at the quest for an empty inbox and offered many familiar strategies including not spending too much time on e-mail, archiving everything that doesn’t need an immediate response and either responding right away, forwarding right away if the message would be better answered by someone else, or leaving the e-mail to respond to at length later (but make that later in the same day as much as possible, not some undefined later).

How e-mail works for me

I have tried to follow the great suggestions offered at 43 Folders in its great Inbox Zero series, but things that get automatically routed to folders besides my inbox get automatically ignored, to the point that I had a folder with more than 100 unread newsletters in it (I unsubscribed to a lot, which is also a great tip).

For me, I try to deal with things immediately when they’re easy to deal with immediately. Any requests for information about my business or inquiring about copywriting services I try to respond to as soon as possible.

Newsletters I’ll often save to read until later in the day, which is one reason my inbox is clogged now (though less so because I recently got rid of a bunch of newsletters I hadn’t read from January). Things I need to take action on but not right away often stay in the inbox as well.

I’d really like to do better by my inboxes. I know I would be more efficient in my work if I were able to clean them out and keep them that way. So I think I’m going to pencil in 10 or 15 minutes every day to work on getting things out of my inbox (and really dealing with things rather than just moving them to different folders) until I get as close to zero as I can, and then I’ll make an effort to maintain that with a few minutes a day of mindful e-mail culling.

If I can do it with my huge array of accounts (and one that now has more than 400 unread messages — most of which will stay unread for eternity) I’ll bet you can do it, too.