Ever get a hunch that turned out to be correct?  Use that same intuition to target your topics.

We are bombarded by tons of information every day, but sometimes something just sticks out and you suddenly pay attention to it.  Personally, I believe that our subconscious is always at work, seeing everything and filtering out the things we don’t want to pay attention to.  In the previous tips we talked about changing your mindset to see things you normally don’t see.  In this tip, we’re talking about following your instinct – and a topic – that just seems to come to you.

TIP # 8

Go with your gut (and interests) and start there.  Then cluster related words and expand your ideas.  Before you know it, you’ll have a series in the works!

“There’s never a lack of subjects to write about. Keep your eyes open and trust your instinct. If something interesting jumps out at you, take note. Literally.

Read the newspaper and circle “faits divers” noteworthy items that catch your eye. Ask yourself why it is those particularly snippets of news made you stop. See if there’s a link to an area of expertise you, or someone else has, take it from there.

“Clustering” helps. Circle a word and write as many associative words around the central one. Next do the same for each of those words. Go on until there’s a shift in your consciousness, the AHA! moment – the instance when you know what it is you want to say.

If you want to stay ahead of local reporters, read newspapers of countries in a different time zone. Always trust your guts and instinct and you’ll hook’em baby!”

– Judith Van Praag author/journalist, artist/designer, public speaker http://hopefilledjars.blogspot.com/

I like Find-A-Word puzzles – always have, since I was a kid.  I like to look at all of the words in the list and then look at the puzzle to see what “jumps” out at me.  I clear out as many words as possible that way. 

Then, I systematically look for each individual word, BUT I do it with the thought that my subconscious has already seen that word, and will show me approximately where it is. 

95% of the time, it works, so I know the subconscious is accumulating information that the conscious mind is not paying attention to.  So why not put that to work in your content creation?

Penny Haynes, http://www.RSSzine.com