I was planning to write a three part miniblog (Is that a thing? I don’t think that’s a thing) called ‘Vagueness, the Plague of the College Admissions Essay’ – and don’t worry, I know you’re all panting to read it, and I will write it, but not today. Because I hadn’t written two sentences of that post when I got the idea for a completely different post and that – getting the idea, not the idea itself – gave me the idea for this blog post. (I know what you’re thinking: the essay I should be writing is ‘Convolution, the Plague of the Blog,’ or at least this blog. Is ‘Convolution’ even a word?…yes, it is. “A convolution is an integral that expresses the amount of overlap of one function g as it is shifted over another function f” Overlapping, shifting integrals, the plague of this blog. Totally obvious, I know.)
All of this is to say: sometimes the way to get ideas about things is to do the thing. At least with writing, at least with me, that’s how it works. If I’m not writing, then my brain seems to fog up and I can’t think of anything to write about. But once I start writing, new ideas seem to pop up all over the place, both when I’m writing and when I’m not. It’s like the act of writing stimulates the creative part of my brain. (Note: This is not a scientific study and may be completely wrong and/or impossible.)
Are you having trouble coming up with a topic for your essays? Well, you still have lots of time – here’s an experiment you could try. Write something, anything, everyday for a month. Ideas (courtesy of The Idea Factory™):
1 – Write micro short stories – flash fiction pieces of 100-200 words
2 – Journal the events of your day
3 – Write your autobiography, going backwards, season by season (i.e Spring 2024 is the first entry, then Winter 2023, Fall 2023, etc.)
4 – Write reviews of your favorite books/movies/video games
5 – Pretend you’re traveling in imaginary places – Mordor, for example, or Wonderland, or Westeros – and write reviews of your hotel/restaurant/sightseeing experiences for TripAdvisor (Hmmm…I think I might do this one!)
6 – Write letters of advice to characters in books or movies who make stupid decisions
7 – Write rejection letters to famous people who have asked for your help
8 – Turn your most embarrassing elementary/middle school experiences into a children’s book; write one (or one half or one quarter) chapter a day
9 – Journal the events of somebody else’s day
10 – Write descriptions/character sketches of your friends or family
I’m sure you can think of much better ideas; this was just to give you a sense of the possible. It doesn’t have to be very long either – you could set a word count, and even if you haven’t finished the entry/review/letter/whatever, once you reach your word count, you’re done for the day. The idea is to develop your writing muscles. (Did I seriously just write ‘develop your writing muscles’? That phrase sounds totally stupid. Sadly though, it does a good job of describing what I mean.) Practice writing something fun, that you enjoy, and you will be a) learning to write well and b) developing your own voice and c) getting ideas for other things to write, some of which may lead to great ideas for an essay topic!
Strike the Write Note 