logged
How to find interesting ideas to write about in your emails
Just had a client and TNM community member ask:
"How do I find interesting ideas to write about in my emails?"
After you write 30 or 40 emails, you start to feel like you're running out of ideas.
I can relate. I've been there too. But these days, that’s really not an issue for me anymore. Because eventually, content just begets more content. But until that happens, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to stimulate the process.
Here’s where good ideas actually come from:
They don't come from sitting there, willing them into existence. They come from something you do before you sit down to write.
Take, for example, Archimedes…
The Greek inventor who spent hours in his lab, sweating over his ability to determine the authenticity of the king’s supposedly golden crown. Working hard, thinking through every angle, but getting nowhere.
The breakthrough didn’t happen for him in his lab.
It happened later, in his home.
When he stepped into his bathwater and saw the water level rose.
That’s when inspiration finally hit. The displacement principle. The answer he’d been searching for. The work came first and the connection came later.
Writing works the same way.
If you’re scrambling for ideas at the moment you need them, you’re doing it wrong. The real practice isn’t, “how do I come up with ideas when I sit down to write?”, the real practice is, “how do I stay curious enough for ideas to find me when I least expect them?”
I treat idea-gathering as completely separate from writing.
Anytime something genuinely catches my attention… a story, a fact, a weird observation, something my girlfriend says… I capture it. Not because I know how I'll use it. But because it’s interesting.
I tap into the daily wellspring of ideas instead of trying to chase inspiration on demand.
And when I sit down to write?
The ideas are already there waiting.
Not because I forced them, but because I’ve prepared for them.
If you want to see how I actually organize and use this system in real time (along with everything else that's working in my business right now), there’s a lesson on precisely that inside The Nature of Marketing community.
It’s aptly titled:
“How To Get Ideas”
Talk soon,
Kevin Hood