The challenge of any writer is, “what do I write about?” Maintaining a blog every day, I ask that question all the time. Since I started a blog over 7 years ago I’ve been able to come up with things to talk about almost every single day. With a bit of creative brainpower and a few tips from me, I’m sure that you’ll have plenty to talk about the next time you hit a writer’s block. Sometimes we forget as writers that our readers don’t know everything that we do, or haven’t experienced all the things that we have. When we try to come with something to write about, those things, that as authors we find boring, might just attract new readers.

There are four things that I use quite regularly when I want to generate a list of possible topics for my blogs.

1. Brainstorm

Anyone who has taken a high school English course has learned one or two methods to brainstorm. Think back to those days, or look up brainstorming techniques on the Internet. There are two ways that work best for me in my blogging. Brain DumpI highly doubt this was the academic term, but when I’m not sure what to write about, this is the first tactic I engage in.

Open up a word document or pull out pen and paper. Set a timer for ten minutes. When you’ve pressed start, just start writing. It doesn’t have to make sense and likely won’t at first, but something amazing begins to happen the more random writing that you do. Your mind begins to focus and then all of a sudden you have new topics. Sure there will be crummy ideas mixed in, but after the buzzer goes off you’ll have at least a few that you can use. Web MappingIt’s very likely that if you have had a blog for any length of time you have some topics that you enjoyed writing about. This is the perfect time to expand on those or come up with topics related to them.

Using a new word document or piece of paper (I prefer paper for this one), write your topic in the middle of the paper. Then, in a circle around the topic, I write the five W’s: who, what, when, where, why and how. With each of these new words, start asking yourself questions related to them and the topic. Who did X? Where were you? How did it happen? Your goal here is to find related topics to the one that you enjoyed that either branches off from it or writes it from a different perspective.

2. Read Other Sites

There is a wealth of information out there if you take the time to read it. Like many sex bloggers, I have a blog list a mile long. I love reading the antics and stories of what everyone is up to. Reading their writing is like a playground for my own material.

The next time you read someone else’s blog ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you like the post? What do you or don’t you like about it?
• Do you have a similar story that you could share?
• What are your thoughts on the activities or behaviors of the people in the post?
• Are there news or media stories related to the post?
• Could you write their post from a different perspective?

Other ways to get ideas is to use idea prompts, there are sites on all sorts of topics chock full of questions to help jog your brain into something to write about. Run a search in your favorite engine for journal prompts and you’ll be directed to hundreds of perfectly good sites to farm topics from.

Try reading your favorite discussion board as a topic treasure chest. Don’t aim to answer any of the questions there, but jot down the topics that interest you and work on your responses to them in your blog. You can do this with comments to other people’s blog posts as well.

3. Write From a Different Perspective

Much of what I write is what I’m familiar with or comfortable with. I use my own experiences in my writing. Most of it is first person. Sometimes I figure out a way to tell the same story from a different perspective that readers seem to enjoy.

Try to tell a story from the other person’s point of view. Or perhaps pretend you are the fly on the wall; what would it look like? Maybe an inanimate object could be the lead character of the post? And don’t forget dialogue; it’s like the reader is eavesdropping on a conversation.

Any way you look at it; a story can become completely different just by putting the words in someone else’s mouth.

4. Respond To Readers

One of the best places to find ideas is in our own comments on our blog. The readers may not be asking direct questions all the time, but the posts that get the most activity tend to be good topics to write on again and again. And don’t forget to answer those questions too! If you put answers to questions in your blog as separate posts, you not only answer the one reader who asked but all the other readers who were thinking the same thing but choose not to voice it.

Emails from readers is another way to generate topics for the blog. Put a contact form or your email on your website and you will most likely be sent emails asking all sorts of questions, asking for advice or general comments that people didn’t feel like leaving on your blog. Using these emails as ideas for topics are like free suggestions! Don’t overlook this valuable resource.

All in all, every blogger, whether you be a sex blogger or not, should take time out of their writing schedule to figure out what else they should be writing about. There is a mountain of content just waiting to be discovered if you look. So the next time you ask yourself what you should write, pull out a few of these ideas and see for yourself what topics your readers are looking for.