How Being a Writer is Less Writing and More Everything Else

Just because I'm a writer doesn't mean I'm writing all the time. Because really, if I was writing all the time, I wouldn't have anything to write about. It's an odd conundrum. What came first, the chicken or the writing?

Instead, actually composing sentences and putting my thoughts to electronic document takes up about 20% of my time, the other 80% is doing the things that will lead to the writing. Because you can't make a cake out of thin air, and you can't write if you don't do anything worth writing about.

So here is what I do instead of writing. Which consequently influences the writing:

Now for a Limited Time: Ideas!

One of my favorite professors ever, Johanna Keller (who is my very own personal Dumbledore) says that ideas are like water in the well.

And when you run out, it's time to refill the well. If these past two weeks have been any indication to me, it's that the well is working overtime. Having pitched four ideas for a web journalism class and gotten rejected on all of them, and having a story that I'm writing for Back Stage implode forcing me to think up three more ideas, I've been on constant idea generating mode.

So that brought my idea generating status to a grand total of 8 ideas in two weeks. And not counting updating this blog and starting work on my new column for "TheCelebrityCafe.com" called "Culture Ninja" (hyah!!).

And I will like to share with you readers, my idiot-proof way to think up feature article ideas, honed from a grand 2.5 years of journalism.

Diep's Handy-Dandy, Idiot-Proof Way to Generate Ideas