How to climb out of a creativity rut.

 

 

 

 

What to do when you run out of inspiration, can’t get ideas for writing?

Normally, my biggest problem is time to write the posts, not the ideas to write about. But perhaps my brain got frizzled in the 8 day mini heat wave we had here a week ago, it shouldn’t have after spending all my life in Africa. I am sure that is the longest period with consecutive days over 30C (84F) we have had since I arrived in Canada in 2004. My brain might have become conditioned to the cooler weather in this part of the world.

Whatever the reason, I have been struggling to come up with ideas this week.

None of my normal tricks have worked, I have gone through my folder of possibilities for future posts, kept an eye open on twitter for trends, checked Google Trends, newspapers, radio and TV news. Nothing excited me. I have already written about Penny Auctions this week, although that is a very popular subject which gets more visitors to this blog than anything else right now, I could not find a lot new to add yet. Except that I really enjoy checking my report every night and seeing how much I have earned that day. I am not supposed to disclose publicly how much I do earn each day so I won’t. To find out open your own account here Zeek Rewards and watch your own pension building plan tick over. (Affiliate link)

Perhaps I am getting soft in my old age, but I could not find much to attack the government, the police, liberals, the nanny state or hypocritical environmentalists about. Things are so bad still in Zimbabwe that I do not even want to think about it, let alone write about it. Interesting that the West is getting into such a froth about Syria but does nothing to stop Mugabe from continuing to wreck what was once a peaceful and successful country. Hypocrisy again.

Couldn’t come up with much new in Internet Marketing or Social Media either. Some indications that social media is having a negative effect on people’s lives, social media anxiety both from too much and too little of.  A well written and convincing post that blogging has passed it’s zenith and is no longer effective as a business marketing tool. An equally well written and, in my opinion, more convincing, post that  a good blog is a very effective marketing tool for businesses large and small. That is something I will explore in a later post.

I am also becoming more concerned with publishing worthwhile content than publishing to meet my schedule of 3 or 4 posts a week. I do notice that my Alexa rating drops (the number gets bigger) if I miss a post or two in a week, but ratings are not the priority.

Knowing that other bloggers suffer from the same drought of ideas from time to time, I resorted to my best standby for times like this. Google reader and my RSS subscriptions from about 30 blogs. (Trimmed from the over 100 I subscribed to last year). There is such a wealth and diversity of content in those blogs that opening Google reader guarantees that I am going to be totally absorbed in reading for a couple of hours. That is exactly what happened today, and of course some of the good posts contain links to other blogs which have to be investigated, some subscribed to, once again building up the list of subscriptions.

The reading did give me some ideas for future posts, but I particularly liked this infographic from Brian Clark of Copyblogger:

How To Break Out Of A Creative Rut.

Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

 

The infographic and reading some very interesting stuff from a wide variety of successful writers certainly got me out of the creative rut, I will be back in top form for my next post.

Wishing you success in all your endeavours.

 

 

 

 

siesta graphic by: