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Or, You can bet your sweet ass you know what to write about

Because I do not write nearly enough, I have become rusty at coming up with topics. Indeed, though I have been venturing into blogging for a couple years now, I still have a lot of trouble pulling ideas out of my head. While the follow through is strong when I do have a topic, it’s not the writing itself that is at an impasse. This became remedied, recently, through a couple different variations of the same method. Some people apparently call it riffing. I prefer to call it the genius method. As in, “talent borrows; genius steals.”

That doesn’t mean I want you to go out and steal peoples’ content – or even their ideas. Rather, I want you to build off of content others have created – using theirs as a platform for yours. This isn’t necessarily stealing, but it is definitely appropriating, perhaps recklessly, toward your own goal.

What You’ll Need

1. StumbleUpon.

That’s it. No, really.

You can also opt to use a major search engine, or even a niche search engine, but StumbleUpon (and randomness) is my preferred method because it tends to look more organic

How You Do It

Click the Stumble button. Granted, you’ll need to set up your account to include your interests first, but you won’t have too much trouble doing that.

Now stumble until you find an article that piques your interest. It doesn’t have to be relevant to you or your message. It just has to be interesting.

Read the article. Find a piece of content that is somewhat relevant to what you do. For example, I found a segment about riffing that basically says it’s the foolproof end-all be-all of inspiration. It’s intriguing. It’s strange. It deserves a comment.

Or better yet, a post.

Appropriating appropriately

As bloggers, we are sometimes timid about using other peoples’ ideas for our own, while other times we throw caution to the wind and use content lackadaisically. Neither is right, nor is it a way to do justice to the journalist side of blogging.

When you decide to use others’ content to inspire your own, always pay attribution to those who you are taking from.

Also bear in mind that you need to do the original justice. Try not to misquote or use inaccuracies to further your point. Always link to the original source – not only so your audience can read the original, but also because the other person spent the time developing the idea, and thus should get the credit for it.

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