Home Columns

How to Keep a Column Flowing
by Mary Emma Allen

You're so excited. A newspaper editor has accepted your column proposal. You submitted four sample columns to get you started. You're bubbling over with ideas and think you'll never run out of material.

Then after two or three months, the newness wears off, you have to come up with a new column weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly. The work sets in and the ideas slow down.

How Do You Keep Ideas Flowing?

Now you wonder how you'll find material to keep your ideas flowing and the columns written. This is turning out to be more work than you bargained for.

Don't lose hope.

I've written a cooking column for more than 30 years for various publications, a quilting column for 10 years, a consumer column for 20 years, a gardening column for 10 weeks, a regional history column off and on for 20 years. I've had to use various techniques to keep the ideas flowing.

Techniques to Try

Try some of these:

• Make a list of topics for the coming six months, preferably a year. Sometimes an editor will ask for this before agreeing to your columns. When an editor suggested I write a gardening column for a weekly summer magazine, she wanted me to submit a list of the column topics I would be using.

• Continually be on the lookout for column ideas. Wherever you go, whenever you're with other people, when you're reading or watching television, keep atuned to topics you can use for your column.

• A phrase, a picture, a conversation, a description in a book or magazine may serve to spark your imagination and give you an idea for yet another column. Keep a little notebook with you for writing down these ideas before you forget them.

• Ask readers what topics they'd like to know more about. Encourage questions which you will answer in the column or research for a column.

• Read other columns on the same or similar topic. You don't do this to copy, but to get ideas. You might come across a phrase which stimulates your thinking and gives you ideas based on your research and background.

• Before you propose a column, make sure you are knowledgeable enough to write about this topic week after week, month after month. When I was asked to produce the gardening column, I had never written this type of column before.

  However, the editor, for whom I'd written many articles, asked me to consider it.

  "Have you ever done gardening? Do you and your family have a garden?" she asked.

  Yes, I grew up on a farm where we had a large garden each year. My husband and I had raised a garden many of the years of our marriage even though our present abode didn't lend itself to gardening. I had many gardening books in my library.

  "You can do it for the summer," the editor remarked. "It's only 10 columns."

  Since that column was a short term one, I decided I could do it because I had experience in gardening and had the research at my fingertips. (This was before the days of Internet research.)

  By putting down a list of topics for the columns, I wasn't at a loss for something to write about. I found I enjoyed the experience and occasionally still write articles about gardening.

• Change the format of your column to include interviews, if you originally hadn't planned for this. Sometimes you might use a single interview for your column. Or you can include several viewpoints, ideas from a number of people, depending on the topic and format of your column.

  
  

Copyright © 2001 Mary Emma Allen

Kick start your imagination, ignite your creativity, and begin your journey towards becoming an outstanding writer. Grab a copy of WEEKLY WRITES: 52 Weeks of Writing Bliss! from Amazon.com and receive 2 free e-books to encourage and nurture the writer in you. You'll also receive Write Memories, a journaling workbook available for free only to WEEKLY WRITES book owners. And finally, as a WEEKLY WRITES book owner, you'll have free access to e-mail courses such as JOYFUL WRITES: Celebrate Your Life through Writing For excerpts, reviews and what you need to do to receive the 2 free e-books, Write Memories and sign up for free e-mail courses, just head on to the Weekly Writes Book Official Site. (Clicking on the link will open a new window.)