Brainstorming for Blog Posts

After reading a few articles about what writers should blog, I decided to make a brainstorming post with some of their ideas, that way I can reference it quickly when doing my own research. Half the time I open up my blog and go to make a post, and have no idea what I should write about, or where to start. I know I'm going about this the completely wrong way, so here's a step in (what I hope is) the right direction.

Kirkus MacGowan's blog post, Blog Ideas for Fiction Writers: Peanut Buying Escapades?, he gives a brief list of topics that I found to be fascinating. Writing from a character's point of view, or discussing the inspiration for your current WIP are good places to start when it comes to blogging about your work without blogging about your work.

Joan Stewart, of thepublicityhound.net, wrote a blog post called Fiction authors: Blog about these 19 topics that has a nice, big list of inspiration. If I was a more disciplined writer, I would take one of these per day or week, and write up a post. It may not make me any better of a writer, but at least I'd be more prolific. (Though, I have a feeling it would help be be a better planner, brainstormer, and writer--if NaNoWriMo taught me anything, it's that if you force yourself to be more disciplined, it improves your performance in a lot of ways.)

Is it easier for Non-Fiction writers to maintain blogs? The article WHAT SHOULD FICTION WRITERS BLOG ABOUT? over at writersdigest.com gives some good advice to Fiction Writers who want to make their blogs display their own strengths, interests and eccentricities.

Over at warriorwriters.wordpress.com, the article Sacred Cow-Tipping–Why Writers Blogging About Writing is Bad brings up the idea that writers shouldn't be blogging about writing for a number of reasons, but mostly for imposing limitations and increasing competition. The points made are good, and don't preclude a writer from creating and sustaining a blog, but it seems to only address the problem and not supply a solution. (Or, a variety of solutions and advice.)

Jami Gold approaches the question a slightly different way in her blog post, How Do You Choose Blog Topics? by responding to the warriorwriters.wordpress.com article. She interprets the original post to say that writers should blog about "our brand. About us." Then she goes on to describe her own approach to blogging from her perspective as a writer.

All of these articles or blog posts beg the question, "what do YOU want to write about?" or, more importantly, "what would you want to read about, as an author's fan?" Those are good questions to consider. What would I want to write about? What would I want the fans of my writing (if I ever find some out there) to read about?