Being a better blogger is something many of us aspire too (even I aspire to that), but coming up with things to write about on a regular basis can be difficult. Leading off the previous post I explicitly wrote called Writing Is Fucking Hard I want to share one of the ways I come up with things to write about.
Many articles will tell you to write about things you love or are passionate about. I do that, I write a lot about Javascript and the web in general because it is what I love, but writing about the latest Javascript framework or language can be difficult. A post about Javascript generally requires thought, research and takes days to write.
While I try to keep my complaining down to a minimum, sometimes I like to write about things that annoy me. One of my most passionate subjects is inefficient and unrealistic hiring practices implemented by many tech companies hiring developers.
Not only is writing a post about something that annoys you a great therapeutic exercise, it also helps you practice restraint and discipline. Anyone can rant about something, but it takes a certain degree of writing to adequately get your point across without starting a war.
Anyone can be positive, but being negative in a positive way is more challenging. Doing this can actually be a great writing exercise to broaden your writing toolset beyond tutorials and positively glowing pieces on things you love.
A great example is one of my most popular posts in terms of consistent traffic not reliant on a site like Hacker News or Reddit driving traffic. This actually surprises a lot of people who assume my Javascript articles are the most popular (while they are still popular, you’ll see one post not about the web at all is more popular).
Last year I kept getting telemarketing calls from a company representing an Australian telco Telstra, this company kept calling from the same number and would call everyday. They would never leave a voicemail message, they also would keep on calling and it was frustrating (not to mention, distracting).
So instead I used it as an opportunity to write a post. I figured I probably wasn’t the only person they were bothering, after a Google search came up empty, I answered the call and then wrote a post telling people who it was and why they were calling. The post in question is here.
The point is, I didn’t write about why I don’t like a particular food or brand of coffee (not to say you shouldn’t), I wrote about something that was annoying me. I turned it into a post, which just so happens to get thousands of hits from Google daily (not a glowing endorsement for the company calling).
If there is one thing you should take from this it is to explore alternative things to write about. Don’t feel as though you need to stick to writing things you have come to be known for. The above post isn’t about the web, but who cares? If it can benefit someone else and better you as a writer, why not?
And what better way to illustrate my point than to highlight the very fact that this post is not about anything web related (except loosely blogging)?
