Idea Catcher Notebook for Magazine Article Ideas

Okay, knowing your niche market. getting paid for freelance magazine article work, all that's left to grow is to keep those article ideas green and growing. Certainly the clippings files of interesting ideas are growing fatter and staying organized. What's left to do? What's next is to start your ever-present notebook idea catcher, or if there already is one, to expand on how its used and keep it going. They don't get carried around day-in and night-out for only the most profound thoughts and headiest quotes. Those kind of journals end up under the bed covered in dust. They are for musings, intriguing comments and questions heard or stumbled upon, reactions to news, relationship updates, reading responses and questions; descriptions and solutions to problems--you could even draw mini mind-maps. There is so much to write about that will jar loose so much more. Perhaps you're on a bus or a train and it's going to be a moderately long ride. Get out your notebook and write about what your life's mission is. Take the position of a soul searcher, a seeker after truth and justice, an adventurer or a wanderer and write what you think, feel and observe from one of those identities. Go to a movie and if it affects you, write a mini-review. Record dreams and fantasies. What do they suggest about your waking life? Put yourself into the life of an intriguing stranger you noticed. What is their life like? What do they do? What do they dream about? What do they believe? Do they love? Get into it. Get into objects. Arrange them into still lifes and try to understand them from an artistic perspective. What do you do to them and why? Which do you prefer? Write about the experience. What did you learn? Describe your pets. Write characterizations about them. You didn't know them as well as you do now when you named them. Do they suit their names? What would you name them now, if not. What one word would you use to describe your pet? What do you think your pet thinks about, if you think your pet thinks? List major changes in your past life, present life, those coming up and those you would like to make in your future life. Remember as you write to be as specific as you can. Use plenty of sensory words that also can jar the memory and bring forth ideas. Create the sights, sounds, smells and textures for the reader even if the reader is only going to be you. At times go back over earlier entries and rewrite something that grabs you or fashion it into something else--perhaps an article? Take yourself on field trips just for the sake of your idea catcher: a walk in the woods, a trip to the park, a walk along the beach, a trip downtown--all enjoyed in detailed description in your notebook. Sit at a coffee shop and collect bits of overheard conversation. Some people make entire blogs out of these bits and some imagination. The part of the conversation you're not privy to is as engaging as what you do hear. Soon these snippets will grow and flower and become living, breathing articles. Each notation is like a dandelion after the flower has faded and only the skeleton is left. Blow on this feathers and watch what they can become.

WE HAVE BEEN INVADED!

Yes, I was almost invaded myself this morning. I thought well, why not, the rest of the Internet community is always a buzz over selling blog space, I might as well get with it. To tell you the God's truth, and it's shameful, I had moved over to WordPress because I saw in ads that people wanted you to be familiar with it. Then I came back to Blogger and read about this new AdSense thing, and I had been a little bummed that I couldn't use the new Google AdSense I was just dying to try at WordPress so I moved back. Taking my blogs back and forth like a teenage newlywed going back and forth to Mom and Dad's after learning what marriage is really like. Well, now I'm back and I figured today I would get me some of that big money and sign on for AdSense. It was much easier than I had let to believe. I first looked it up in FAQ and boy did that confuse me. I ended up downloading some WordPress template that I had no idea how to install. Finally I figured out it was a "gadget" listed on layout and I only had to make a couple of clicks. And there on my beautiful page with a poem about my daughter and a picture of a wood thrush meant to represent her as she leaves the nest for good, was an ad, first about making big bucks doing some damn thing, and, the second one was about "blogging for dollars". I simply could not live with myself. And for what? Two cents a day? No thank you. If I sell out it's going to be for larger cash. You know I write now for Suite 101.com. I just started freelancing regularly for them. I feel like it's sort of a real job in that I filled out an application with writing samples and got accepted and all that. As you can see from link, I have a profile and a list of my articles and my picture and everything. Well, yesterday I almost pissed where I swim. I was anxious to fill up that list of articles written by me and was lunging around desperate for ideas. I hate when I get like that. I am totally burned out but won't admit it. I had spent three days on that 2,700 word "History of Coffee" piece. (I used three books for reference and a bunch of Internet sites.) I was crunchy. Anyhow, I started doing what I do when I am fresh out of article ideas. I went to 2007 Google Zeitgeist, Google Trends and Hot Trends for the day and previous few days, and then I went to AOL's blog on their day's trends. They were writing and listing bizarre celebrity spa treatments like fanny facials, snake massages, snake venom creams, cupping, nightingale dung facials, lava shell massage, 24-carat gold facials, human placenta facials, hyaluronic acid (key component of human tissue), and, oh, yeah, fish nibbling at your toes pedicures. And let's not forget Demi Moore's admission on Letterman this past March that she went to Austria to have leeches suck the old out of her and then she laid in a bathtub of turpentine to "detoxify" her body. Is a younger man's attention really worth all that? Well, I had names of which celebs did what. (Madonna-placenta, Gwyneth-cupping, snake venom and, I'd say, pretty much whatever; and I even got Oprah down for hyaluronic acid, although I like to think of her as too ethereal for all of that nonsense.) Well I had the thing pretty much written and went to paste it on the little machine that takes the articles. The f'n machine just spun around and the words went into cyberspace. I tried it about three times. It just wouldn't take my junky, crappy, low-life article that was only geared toward keyword optimization and nothing else much really. I woke up grateful today. I am ashamed and sorry, but I still may go write it for Helium. I spent too much time on researching who did what to blow it off completely. I only wish I knew if it were true about Halle Berry putting coffee grinds on her butt to get rid of cellulite. It sounds kind of out there, but what if it's true? Some so-called expert says that because coffee is a stimulant and a diuretic that when applied on the skin it increases blood flow and thus detoxifies and breaks up cellulite. Pretty to think so, eh? Oh, well, it should get me high ratings on Helium for the dish. Damn Helium. They owe me $70 for an article I sold on, get this, the body language of horses. Tell me that didn't take some research. I put in for it weeks ago, before the first of the month, as specified. I actually expected to see it in my PayPal account yesterday. Still not there today. No sign of it in my "earnings" report except as an "adjustment". I sent them an e-mail. If they don't pay up this entire blog may be changed to the Helium.com is a Con and a Thief etc. Blog, making sure I use all the right key words to get it Googled regularly. Ta Ta for now.