As a professional blogger (or as an aspiring professional blogger), it’s easy to approach your first project with a tremendous level of enthusiasm. You can feel like you are incredibly passionate about your chosen subject or niche, whatever it may be, and you’ve got more ideas than you can handle. The well of creativity is literally overflowing with possibilities. You dive in head first with this sense of unbridled excitement, because you know that you have near limitless potential and opportunity in front of you.
Drip, Drip, Drip…
But how many times have you seen other bloggers approach their first sites (or even their second, third, or fifth sites) with that same kind of enthusiasm, only to have their passion fizzle out a couple of weeks in. They think that they have this bottomless pit of creativity and they have so many things they want to write about, but not long after starting, they run out.
The well of ideas has run dry, they’re feeling a little burned out, and they’re all tapped out of topics for upcoming blog posts. What can they do?
What can you do?
Just Show Up
Well, let me put your mind at ease. Even the best of bloggers, even the most prolific of writers, run out of ideas eventually even if they maintain an ongoing list of potential blog post topics. This is perfectly normal and it happens to the best of us. The truth is that “writer’s block” is generally not the exception; it’s the rule, and you just have to figure out a system for how to overcome it on a consistent basis.
Gavin Aung Than of the popular webcomic Zen Pencils once said the thing that separates the professional from the hobbyist is that the former is willing to put in the work even when they don’t really feel like doing it. Even when they don’t think they can come up with anything good. Just showing up to work can feel like the hardest part some days, because it’s just so easy to come up with an excuse to skip a day. But you’ve got to put in the work, because skipping one day easily leads to skipping another and another and another.
Before you know it, you’ve given up again and that passion project has completely fizzled away.
Tapping into Creativity
So, what can you do when your creative well of ideas runs dry? Dig another one. A great way to reignite that fire and to get you excited about working again is to start something new. Maybe you’ve been blogging for a while and it’s starting to feel too routine. Consider starting another blog on a different topic. Or explore other creative possibilities like writing a book, starting a podcast, or launching a YouTube channel.
These new wells of possibility can reveal all sorts of new opportunities and they allow you to approach the work with the same kind of enthusiasm and passion as when you first started with your first project. Along the way, you’ll form new connections, learn new skills, and develop a better-rounded understanding of your industry or vertical.
This doesn’t mean, however, that you should abandon that original blog or project altogether. Quite the contrary. While you may be diverting some of your attention and resources toward digging a new well, the “old” well will slowly start to replenish as it sits a little more dormant than usual, just like with a real well in the real world. Soon enough, it will once again be filled with new possibilities, ideas and opportunities.
And you’ll be able to tap into it once again.