I originally wrote about this in June 2020, when I first began these writing prompts, but there’s a lot going on so I thought it bears revisiting.
Often, figuring out what the write about is enough of a challenge that it risks keeping pages blank. And, especially when there’s pressure to write around something highly timely and topical (a news hook), the pressure is even more present. In that spirit, here are some low-key strategies to help ideas find you:
Google News: First, think about your area of expertise or general wheelhouse and type it into Google. Then, click the “news” tab. Voila! Dozens of timely news stories related to the thing you know about. Say your thing is writing about food. Head over to Google News, type in “food,” and hit enter. Quickly, you’ll see stories about the wheat shortage, inflation’s impact on food pantries, a Pennsylvania food festival raising money for Ukrainian refugees, NFL players doing giveaways in their hometowns, and so on. You could use any of those as a jumping off point and write about what you know, and in a timely way.
Google Alert: Here’s Google’s tutorial on setting up a Google alert. But, before you do, consider the search you’ll look for. If, say, organic agriculture is your expertise, you might have a Google Alert set up for “agribusiness,” one for “organic farming” and one for “pesticide.” You can easily have new, relevant items delivered right to your inbox either in real-time, or as a daily or weekly digest.
An RSS reader will change your life: Take a look at tools like Feedly, Tiny Tiny RSS, Newsblur, Paperoak, etc. They allow you to pull the content of multiple websites into one place for easy scanning. My Feedly has hundreds of publications all neatly organized by topic and I and quickly scan headlines, bookmark what I want to read, save things I might want to reference later, etc.
In Feedly, simply click “add content” and you can add links to your favorite academic journals, new organizations, and, yes, even your aforementioned Google alerts so the latest is all there in one place, at a glance. (If you really want to make it work for you, can can organize content sources into folders by topic.) Feedly has a paid and free version. I use the free one and have hundreds of sources feeding in, divided into different folders like “tech,” “business,” “news,” and even personal interests like “gardening” and “yoga.” Give it a try and see if it’s helpful to you. If you like it, have your Google alerts feed into Feedly instead of your email to keep things at-a-glance and streamlined.