Sometimes Starting is the Hardest Part

The Problem of Getting Ideas

Sure, you say, writing isn't hard. Getting the ideas about what to write is the hard part. And you're right. So how do writers get ideas?

As a professional writer, among other things I have been a columnist and a freelance feature writer. Writing the columns wasn't too bad because I had a regular topic (antiques) and I just had to find column-sized ideas to write about. I was already half way there because I had a general topic; all I had to do was refine it. Feature writing was harder because I was supposed to send in two or three articles with photos each week about people and things of local interest. So I was always on the lookout for material. I kept a small notepad with me to jot down ideas for stories when people mentioned things I thought might be interesting. I wrote about local people with interesting jobs or hobbies, county history, and unusual events. It was fun because I got to be nosey and ask a lot of questions, but it was hard to continue to come up with new ideas every week.

A good topic is important because it is much harder to make something dull look interesting than to fill out the details on an idea that is already interesting. You have to work a lot harder to write about something in which even you aren't interested!

It gets even harder when you have to come up with an idea to write about in class because most people are worried about picking "important" topics for class papers. But over the years people who teach compostion have come up with a number of ways to help writers get started. Here's a few.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is just sitting around throwing out ideas. You can brainstorm by yourself or as part of a group. The trick is not to worry about the quality of the ideas at this point; just try to generate quantity. The more ideas you can come up with, the better chance you have of finding a topic. And sometimes the craziest ideas are the most interesting and make the best papers. Here's an example of brainstorming for a paper about the topic of jobs:

Jobs -- best job -- worst job -- Cedar Point -- Snow cones --first teaching job --cleaning out horse stalls -- manure spreader -- frozen water buckets -- newspaper advisor -- student staff -- PhotoJournal -- wall-eyed boss -- $1.60 an hour

All I'm doing here is thinking about jobs. After I get done jotting down a few more ideas, I can go back and pick out the job that I want to write about. I came up with four jobs that were potentially good for writing about in this short brainstorming session.

Idea Mapping or Clustering

This combines brainstorming with doodling. If you like to draw or doodle, this method might work for you. Using the same ideas for an example as I used above, I would start by drawing a circle in the middle of the paper and writing "jobs" inside it. Then I would draw a line from the circle to another circle with the words "best job" inside. From that circle I would draw a line ending in another circle with one of my best jobs inside, "newspaper advisor," and another line off the "best jobs" circle with the words "first teaching job" inside. Then I would draw lines from the circles with "first teaching job" and "newspaper advisor" inside of them with details about each job connected to that job's circle. I'd do the same with "worst job," connecting the information about worst jobs to it by lines and circles. I'll have to show you this one in class because in this case, a picture is worth at least 1000 words!

Free Writing

The last method I want to talk about is called free writing. All you do is put your pen on the paper and write without stopping for a certain length of time, say ten minutes. Don't worry about writing in complete sentences; don't edit in any way. If you can't think of anything to write, just write "can't think" or "don't know" without stopping. The point of this method is to force ideas out of your mind. You'll get a lot of stupid stuff, but if you keep writing, eventually some real ideas might come out.

So there's a few ways to get started. There are lots of other ways; the important thing is to find one that works for you. Once you get started, the rest is easy.