Deciding what to write about can be a big, overwhelming thing. Fair. But, it’s all about loading up on specific strategies to punch through it. Here’s another one that’s incredibly useful: the micro/the macro.
Say, for example, you are generally interested in writing something about a big event like, say, the war in Ukraine, national politics, a space shuttle launch, or, anything timely.
First, try the macro: take the bird’s eye view of it, whatever it is, and expand it out as big as you can. That could look like, “The recent Space X launch to the International Space Station opened a new era in American space tourism— one that, like just about everything else, is destined to be spoiled by private sector involvement.” Voila, suddenly you’ve pulled back from Space X and opened up a much broader conversation about tech billionaires, CEOs of industry, etc entering involvement in government agencies.
And, also try the micro: find the smallest detail on the topic that you possibly can find and see what you can extrapolate. That might look like, “A great deal of conversation about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continually mentions his background as a comedian who went to law school, speaking to a strange cultural ideal we have that the idea of doing more than one thing with our lives, much less doing more than one thing well, seems unheard of.” Boom, suddenly you’ve taken the Ukrainian war as a news hook, but expanded the detail of the leader’s background in comedy in order to open a broader conversation about our beliefs about work, identity, how we use our time, and how we express ourselves and our curiosity.