As a campus correspondent, you are supposed to help your staff writers with anything they need—including coming up with topics to write about. But even though we help others, sometimes even we get stuck. For example, all this week, I’ve been trying to figure out what to write. Then the idea of helping someone find what to write came to my head, as I was trying to do this myself. The point of this article is not to tell you what to write, but what to do when you feel stuck on writing articles:
1. Think simple
What you write about doesn’t have to be complicated. Having a simple idea will give you a broad topic to talk about, and if you start thinking of smaller topics within it, this will help you think of specifics. For example, in the broad topic of art, there are many things you can talk about; this can include a trip you recently made to a museum, an art piece you’re working on, an art class you’re taking, or anything like that. Thinking simple at first helps you get into details later.
2. Outline
Outlining what you want to talk about can help your article be more cohesive. Every piece of writing should have an introduction, a body and a conclusion. Outlining will help you decide what belongs in what section. It will also give you a good idea of what details about your topic you are going to mention. Doing this will help you structure your article in a way that makes sense to the reader and your Senior Editor as well.
3. Get inspiration
Getting inspiration is very important when writing anything. If you are uninspired when you write, the article will have no voice or rhythm to it, and it will fall flat. Any topic requires inspiration in order to be written properly. For example, if you are one to write about real world events and what goes on in the news, you need that inner inspiration to make your writing work—you are inspired by the recent events to the point where you want to talk passionately about it.
4. Get motivated
Very similar to getting inspired to write, getting motivated is even more important. If the motivation to write isn’t there, the outcome is either no article or an article not written to its fullest potential. I will admit it is hard to find motivation sometimes, especially when you have something going on in life, but finding that motivation is something you don’t have to do on your own. Finding motivation can come from a lot of things, like reading others’ writing, setting a deadline for yourself or writing throughout the week instead of all at once. Becoming motivated is something we all struggle with, but we wouldn’t have articles out there if we didn’t overcome it!
Writing for HC is something we all love doing, hence being part of the chapter. MCLA’s chapter is something special to me personally, and I want to help not only the members of my chapter, but other chapters as well. Being a new CC for HC is something new and exciting, and helping those I can is my biggest goal for this chapter. If I can start with this article about what to do when you have writer’s block, then it can only go up from here!