Make a List and Check It Twice

Everyone knows that Santa Claus makes a list and checks it twice before going on his merry way to bring gifts to all good little boys and girls. Most people do the same before going Christmas shopping. But I bet you never thought of making a list of not only all the places you could sell your writing, but also the different forms of writing you can sell, produced from the same research.

Too many non-fiction writers research an article or book idea, write and publish it, then forget about it. As the old saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

First let’s look at the many types of articles you could write based on the subject matter. If you work in education, you might consider writing one for a journal in your field. But that’s pretty much a dead end to a freelance writer and either doesn’t pay anything or very little.

If you like to travel, you have a myriad of article types to choose from. There’s always the straight travel article about the places you visit, but you could write several on the adventure or sports side of those places. And don’t forget food and historical articles about them.

If you prefer a more scientific approach, you could write about new scientific discoveries and about how they affect medicine, commerce, or industry. Writing trade articles can mean steady work.

And then there’s business and finance articles. Pieces about new business ideas, new businesses, and business advice are always in season. How to market certain types of businesses is yet another approach. Interviews with top business professionals helps those on their way up.

You could also approach a subject by its effect on people. Family relationships, genealogy, art of living, and sociological influences are just the tip of the relationship iceberg.

Your second list should be all the ways you can treat the same subject. One of the easiest articles to write is the how-to piece. Combine this with the standard advice article, and you have a winner.

If you like helping others, you may want to work your information into an inspirational article.  Tell it from your own life, and you have a personal experience piece. An article told from your own insight is one of the most powerful out there. And readers love them.

Take a look at the past and put some nostalgia into your work. Nostalgia pieces are becoming increasingly popular with the ever-growing crowd of baby boomers out there. They like to remember how things used to be, even if their memories cloud over some of the bad things and make the past seem rosy.

Reader’s Digest always said that humor is the best medicine. But not everyone can write humorous articles. Just because you think something is funny doesn’t mean your readers will. Try your humor out on your friends first.

Perhaps you want to get serious and write exposés. These take a considerable more research and time, but in the end can be worth while. If the exposé is too much for you, then perhaps you’d like to try writing controversial essays, although the market isn’t too open for them. In today’s publishing world, a blog on a controversial subject will be more likely to succeed.

And for all those books you’ve read researching an idea, perhaps you can find time to write reviews of them.

Keeping an Idea Book

Ideas are the fuel that keep me going as a writer. These might be for future articles, short stories, plays, non-fiction books, and, yes, even my blogs. They can be little bits of information, observations, profiles, or full-blown concepts. Unfortunately, the human brain–my brain–can’t possibly remember them all. In fact, I can’t remember most of them since they seem to disappear into thin air as fast as they appear.

My solution to this problem is to keep an Idea Book–well, actually, a series of Idea Books. As a writer this notebook is my most valuable possession–it’s what keeps me writing.

Starting an Idea Book is easy. I use a standard 6x9½-inch, spiral-bound notebook that’s about
¾-inch thick. I’ve also found the ones with tabbed divider pages handy, especially when I want to divide my ideas into major subject specialties. And while this is my main depository of ideas, I also keep a small, 3x5-inch, spiral-bound notebook that I carry around with me. Periodically, I skim over the ideas in it and transfer them to my larger Idea Book.

So exactly what do I put into my Idea Book? First and foremost are lists of ideas on a particular topic. I write a monthly genealogy column for Genealogy Today. I can’t write these columns off the top of my head without some research, so I keep an ongoing list of ideas for them in my Idea Book. As soon as I finish writing a current month’s column, I take a look at the list and decide which topic I’m going to tackle next. I also keep a list of all the columns I’ve written in the order I’ve written them, so I don’t repeat myself–or in case I need to refer back to one in a current one.

I also focus ideas in my Idea Book. Sometimes an idea is way too broad, so I have to focus it down to its essence. It’s in this process that I play around with variations on the topic–different slants, possible fiction adaptations, even Web page ideas for any of my four Web sites. I never write about a topic just once. My record is 18 articles on a single topic–The Oregon Trail.

Another part of my Idea Book is the resource section. Here, I jot down information about library books I’ve borrowed in case I need to borrow them again and the addresses of Web sites that contain pertinent information about subjects I write about.

Lastly, I use my Idea Book to brainstorm possible markets for my work.  This might be just a list of places I can send my articles and such or it may be diagrams that help me figure out who will be reading my pieces and then which markets cater to them.

Now for all you junior geeks out there, I haven’t forgotten about you. If you wish, you can adapt all of the above to an Idea Folder on your computer, using your PDA (personal data assistant) or cell phone to record observations, etc. on the run. This concept is fully adaptable to your situation. Whatever you do, get your ideas organized. And you’ll keep writing forever.