Free Article Ideas for Freelance Writers

You are a freelance writer, suffering from a writers block, and yet part of your income comes from writing articles, short stories and poetry. You stare at a blank page unable to write anything, any thing at all, yet that article means everything to you. It means you will have an extra dollar at the end of a particular period. The promise of payment spurs you on, but at times the ideas are short in coming. Where can you find free ideas for your articles?

1. Your family – Most of us come from crazy families. A look at them for a minute and ideas just flow. I know that writing needs some sort of seclusion, and that is why am hiding while writing this, but time spent with our families can be a great source of ideas. Have you noticed your husband’s ears? Look at your wife’s beautiful smile, or how that child vents his anger on the toy you bought the other day. There is an idea!
2. Your pet – You chuckle wondering what it is that you can write about your pet. We all have our pets. It shouldn’t always be a dog or a cat. Some of us hate dogs but have weird pets such as frogs or donkeys. For some, their pets are cars or that laptop. Isn’t this a pit of endless ideas?
3. Your friends - They mustn’t know we are watching them, and we shouldn’t use their names when we write, but friends are a great inspiration, and the struggles and joys and hurts they go through everyday should be able to provide us with free ideas.
4. The internet - Be it facebook, twitter or Google, the internet is one big pot of ideas. Searching as little as your name can give you a million search results that can prove invaluable in writing that article when you suffer from the writer’s block. Nowadays I can write ten articles if I wanted to but when I think of quality, I limit the quantity to one or two. However do not plagiarize.
5. Your heart - What are you feeling at the moment? What are you thinking about? Are you sad, are you bored, put down your feelings on paper and you will be surprised at the response, but you need to be honest about it. I once wrote a magazine entry titled ‘Why am I depressed?’ It was an attempt to cure my own depression. It became such a hit and received so many comments that my depression disappeared!
6. Your hurts – This isn’t repetition. The hurts that we have gone through in the past or in the present may actually serve as fodder for article or poetry writing. Have you ever been jilted, betrayed in the past or simply disappointed by someone close to you? Did your parents treat you in a way that you didn’t approve? Write about it and your hurts shall disappear from your heart. It may take a while, but later you will feel better. Our hearts should be a great inspiration and if we are honest, many may learn from them, and that’s a good cause. Personally I wouldn’t want any child or youth to go through the suffering I went through as a child growing up in Africa; I try to make it better for them by writing.
7. Your business - What do you do for a living? Do you stay around the house and take care of your children? Do you work for some firm in town? Do you operate some shop across the street? That is your business and the joy or fear it instills in your bottomless heart should be a source of ideas for at least ten articles!
8. Your mind - Your mind is without boundaries. It is able to invent monsters or angels in equal measure, it’s able to think of God and the devil at the same time, it is stronger than our bodies and often controls much that we do. Just by closing our eyes and thinking for a while, we can have a thousand and one ideas and that is why you always need a piece of paper and a pen with you always for a laptop sometimes fails and drives us into desolation. Jot down what goes through your mind. Sometimes a minute may give us a whole year of writing ideas!
9. News - Whatever goes on around you may not affect you directly but will affect someone else. It may be news of war in Afghanistan, piracy in Somali, an earth quake in some foreign country or anything newsworthy. News is always worth writing about.
10. Reading - I don’t know how many people would be writing without reading. I just love reading. When I read other articles, stories, books or poems, I react mentally and get a different point of view. Read everything that interests you and you will surely have ideas streaming into your hitherto empty head. By reading others, we prepare our mind to say what has not been said, and if it has been said, we say it in a different way.

Take note that television is not one of the sources but news is. My experience reveals that too much television does not just kill; it strangles creativity and must be avoided by any writer worth his salt. So you watch it and continue writing, well that is you, but for me, I write better when that think is off. What subjects should you write about? Anything. The toothache you suffered last night can be a good start!