{"id":291,"date":"2017-02-26T16:40:47","date_gmt":"2017-02-26T16:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/?p=291"},"modified":"2017-02-26T16:57:58","modified_gmt":"2017-02-26T16:57:58","slug":"finding-subject-matter-to-write-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/finding-subject-matter-to-write-about\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Subject Matter to Write About"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Stuck for Something to Write About? Go Way Back!<\/h2>\n<p>Having &#8216;writer&#8217;s block&#8217; is a common problem, even for experienced writers and if you are new to writing it can stop you in your tracks.<br \/>\nI came across a way to get the old grey cells fired up completely by accident the other day.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I wasn&#8217;t actually <em>Trying<\/em> to write an article at all at the time; I was researching an old domain on <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.org\/web\/web.php\" target=\"_blank\">Internet Archive Wayback Machine<\/a> to decide whether or not the previous content would harm a future website on that domain.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to see what the old website was and found I could bookmark the pages&#8230;<br \/>\nand the outbound links to other websites worked!<br \/>\nThey went to more archived pages on other websites.<\/p>\n<p>Writers of articles tend to link to relevant authority sites, and those have a good chance of having snapshots in Wayback machine.<\/p>\n<h3>Sources of Inspiration<\/h3>\n<p>But I also found that through the<em> Comments<\/em> author links, I could find all sorts of websites that usually had some relation to the original article subject matter, and they had categories that gave me lots of ideas.<\/p>\n<p>By clicking on a category I was able to see loads of article headings. They were a rich source of ideas for writing.<\/p>\n<p>I do know this can be done in current time just by using a search engine, but I was finding old stuff on sites that don&#8217;t exist any more.<\/p>\n\n            <div class=\"toggle-panel cf\">\n                <a href=\"#\" class=\"toggle-panel-toggle-text toggle-show\">TIP<\/a>\n                <a href=\"#\" class=\"toggle-panel-toggle-text toggle-hide\" style=\"display:none\">Hide<\/a>\n                <a href=\"#\" class=\"toggle-panel-toggle\"><span>+<\/span><\/a>\n                <div class=\"toggle-panel-content\">\n                    When browsing Internet Archive WayBack Machine, I suggest keeping your original source page, then open a new tab,\u00a0 following links in that second window one tab at a time. The software running Wayback works jolly hard behind the scenes to bring you the page and the whole thing can easily freeze with lots of tabs open. It\u2019s also considerate not to make it work too hard.<\/p>\n\n                <\/div>\n            <\/div>\n        \n<p><strong>It was fascinating<\/strong>, and I realised it was giving me an insight into how things have changed and developed over the years. It enriched my knowledge about the subject, making it much easier to write naturally. I began to be able to have opinions of my own on something about which I previously knew little.<\/p>\n<span class='bctt-click-to-tweet'><span class='bctt-ctt-text'><a href='https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjulieashti.com%2Fblog%2Ffinding-subject-matter-to-write-about%2F&#038;text=The%20more%20you%20can%20draw%20on%20the%20things%20you%20know%20or%20react%20to%2C%20the%20more%20natural%20your%20writing%20becomes.&#038;via=Ashtijay&#038;related=Ashtijay' target='_blank'rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The more you can draw on the things you know or react to, the more natural your writing becomes. <\/a><\/span><a href='https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjulieashti.com%2Fblog%2Ffinding-subject-matter-to-write-about%2F&#038;text=The%20more%20you%20can%20draw%20on%20the%20things%20you%20know%20or%20react%20to%2C%20the%20more%20natural%20your%20writing%20becomes.&#038;via=Ashtijay&#038;related=Ashtijay' target='_blank' class='bctt-ctt-btn'rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Share on X<\/a><\/span>\n<h3>Don&#8217;t Plagiarize<\/h3>\n<p>I&#8217;m not suggesting you should copy, that&#8217;s a really <strong>bad<\/strong> idea, but rather use what you find to act as a springboard for ideas.<br \/>\nYou can find article subjects by choosing a category from the side menu and look at the page of results.<br \/>\nThat will immediately give you a load of headings that can be explored.<\/p>\n<p>You could read the ones that catch your eye or stop there and just use those to start writing.<br \/>\nSometimes this is so effective that it fills your head with ideas, so while you are writing, what should you do with new ideas that come into your head?<\/p>\n<h3>Make A Reference File<\/h3>\n<p>The file need only be a .txt file you keep handy, on your desktop perhaps. There&#8217;s no big program to load and it opens really quickly. You can use it while you are reading or writing to jot down ideas. Keep it simple.<\/p>\n<p><strong>An hour of reading and taking notes of headlines, points and snippets gave me a reference file I could open any time I was stuck for something to write about.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What do you find to inspire your article writing? You can let me know in the comments below.<\/p>\n<p>I will talk more about writing processes in another article&#8230;<br \/>\nShare this to help more people:)<\/p>\n<p>You might also like to subscribe to my newsletter and be notified of new articles:)<\/p>\n\n<div id=\"58bbf5ff83d30\" class=\"optin-box optin-box-9\" style=\"margin-right: auto;margin-left: auto;\">\n\t<div class=\"optin-box-content\">\n    \t<form action=\"http:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/process-optin-form\/\" method=\"post\" class=\"cf op-optin-validation\"><div style=\"display:none\"><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"provider\" value=\"aweber\" \/><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"redirect_url\" value=\"http:\/\/julieashti.com\/subscribe-to-newsletter-confirmation\/\" \/><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"list\" value=\"3819238\" \/><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"already_subscribed_url\" value=\"http:\/\/julieashti.com\/already-subscribed884\/\" \/><\/div>        \t<div class=\"text-boxes\">\n            \t<div class=\"text-box email\"><input type=\"email\" required=\"required\" name=\"email\" placeholder=\"Enter your email address\" value=\"\" \/><\/div>            <\/div>\n            <button type=\"submit\" class=\"default-button\"><span>Subscribe!<\/span><\/button>                    <input type=\"hidden\" id=\"op_optin_nonce\" name=\"op_optin_nonce\" value=\"5977b84484\" \/><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"_wp_http_referer\" value=\"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\" \/><\/form>\n        <p class=\"privacy\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/wp-content\/themes\/optimizePressTheme\/lib\/assets\/images\/optin_box\/privacy.png\" alt=\"privacy\" width=\"16\" height=\"15\" \/> We value your privacy and would never spam you<\/p>    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stuck for Something to Write About? Go Way Back! Having &#8216;writer&#8217;s block&#8217; is a common problem, even for experienced writers and if you are new to writing it can stop you in your tracks. I came across a way to get the old grey cells fired up completely by accident the other day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[30,28,29],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing","tag-research-for-writing","tag-what-to-write-about","tag-writing-subjects"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306,"href":"https:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julieashti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}