I sat down to blog, and I looked in my publish queue to see if there was anything I wanted to work on. Unfortunately, the publish cupboard was bare. I didn’t know what to do because I like publishing on my blog, and I like to have a daily record of at least two published posts. Often I will do a backlog before I complete the current assignment, because I have gotten behind. I find that I tend to blog better when I have the ‘mood’. However, this ‘mood’ can be dangerous. And today, I needed it but it had gone on holiday.

Where was I going to find some ideas? Well, I started looking in the news at Google News for ideas, and I found something about Mars that had tweaked my interest. I was able to match that with a Mars panorama. Boom! A post was born.

Then I read through Google Reader’s feeds, but so many posts were talking numbers that I didn’t find it enticing at all today to talk about $, % or #. But still, you never know when your subscribed feeds may provide something really juicy.

Also, you can check out other types of media, such YouTube for ideas. Though many of the videos are quite silly, you can surely find something to get your blogging juices started!

Many people suggest checking the articles at sites like ArticleBase or ArticleCity for ideas. However, I have not found that helpful, as many of the articles just remind me of the things I don’t want to write about. But it’s worth a thought, if you’re really stuck.

The last way I can think of is just to start writing something. In fact, my blog is full of drafts that were begun this way. So sometimes I can begin something with a few words or more, and then save it for a time when I have a clearer idea of how to finish it. Other times I can open a post that has been begun in this way, and add or edit it as necessary so that it is fit for publication. This tactic separates the ideation and editing process and thus makes blogging successfully much easier.

There are many ways to find great ideas about how to blog, but I’ll just highlight five ways. How have you overcome blogger’s block? What techniques work for you?

Good reading precedes all good writing. And ReadPrint aims to provide a selection of good reading for the avid blogger!

If you are interested in turning your blog into something more than a daily listing of what you ate, what you did, and who you talked to, supplementing your reading is necessary and addictive.

In our world, too many people spend time specializing in their jobs and in their reading, yet reading outside your specialty can increase your vocabulary, your writing skills, and broaden your perspectives: so don’t be afraid, read more, and enjoy it more! The benefits of broad reading will allow you to communicate more clearly those ideas that you really care about.

And it needn’t cost a lot of money to enjoy the classics, thanks to websites like Readpring.com.

Having been blogging almost daily since late 2006, I am beginning to understand what I used to teach as a writing teacher to my students from a new perspective: good blogging is a recursive process, not a product oriented approach.

Let me explain: in our world, we are all obsessed with the final products that we see all around us. Books in bookshops have covers, neatly printed pages, indexes, etc.. Magazines in newsstands are glossy, full of great pictures, well-written and relevant stories. It seems that the articles are all ‘finished’, and that because they look finished, we assume that they must have always been that way. In other words, to borrow an allusion to biblical fundamentalists (with apologies), that the words were somehow ‘breathed out’ by the authors (as opposed to the Author) in a final form right onto the page, and then were published ‘as-is’. That is how it so often ‘appears’ to bystanders. With the advent of blogging technology, it appears even more so that way: words are typed into the blog interface directly, bloggers hit ‘publish’ and that’s it. Except that’s not ‘it’.

In fact, it is rarely the case that a piece of writing is delivered ‘as-is’. Many of my writings have gone through a number of discrete stages before I hit ‘publish’, and in some cases, have gone repeatedly through some stages, and are still sitting in my publish queue because they are not ready. Recursive writing means exactly that. That as we write, we develop more and more clarity about the subject of our writing, whether the individual post, the series of posts, or even the whole blog. That clarity, whether it focuses on content or form, allows us to recreate and reinterpret the earlier writing for greater clarity. That process of writing, rewriting, and editing can be gone through many times before publishing a post.

So, if you have lots of posts sitting in your queue, don’t worry. This is natural: some posts are still at the concept stage, some are still at the writing stage, some are being edited and/or rewritten. Perhaps one or two are even nearly done, just waiting an opportune time.

How do you handle your posting? Do you write stream of conscious or do you rewrite a lot?