30 Blog Topics For Writers

Owning a blog seems to have become a 'must-have' for writers these days. It keeps us in contact with our readers, gives us a platform to display some of our great work and it's free marketing tool. But when you choose to blog every day, you can run out of things to talk about. I know it's happened to me on occasion.

My blog, The Gift, used to target a specific audience: special needs children and their families. I loved it but I realized I was running the same topics over and over and I missed chatting about the other passions in my life. In the last few months, I've given my blog a more general feel to it. I still talk about living in a special needs family as that's where my heart is but I also have days devoted to writing, music, gardening, cooking and other interests. And you know what? My followers have doubled, my daily hits have skyrocketed and I've even been approached for some pretty cool writing gigs!

I thought what I'd do for today's post is share a few ideas you can try when your blogging topic well runs a bit dry. Here's a short list of 30 you can try out:

1) Do a book review. And don't do what everyone else is doing. Choose a book that's controversial, edgy or just different.
2) Interview an author.
3) Interview a magazine or ezine editor about what's hot, what's not, the Do's and Don't's for their publication and what they're looking for right now.
4) Highlight a new writing opportunity.
5) Do a giveaway.
6) Get another writer, author, editor or publisher to do a guest post.
7) Review a writing resource.
8) Do a 'Top ____' list. Choose a subject such as best/worst books, best writing tools, etc.
9) Do an interview with a character from either one of your works or someone else's.
10) Post a picture and have followers write short story about it.
11) Do a weekly writing prompt.
12) Start a story and invite followers to keep the story going by adding their own scene.
13) Interview a child about his or her favorite books and why they love them. (Kids are a GREAT resource for writing ideas!)
14) Flip through a book, read the sixth sentence and write something based on that sentence. You can choose whichever numbered sentence you fancy! I just chose sixth.)
15) Share a short story, article or chapter from your latest work.
16) Participate in Six Sentence Sunday.
17) Write a post about your favorite song and why it means so much to you.
18) Put another author's blog in the spotlight.
19) Discuss a media tool (eg: Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.) or give some tips on how to use it most effectively.
20) Have a 'Writers' Treasure Hunt' where readers have to go to fellow writer's blogs for clues to win a prize.
21) Participate in, or organize, a writer/author blog hop with a specific theme.
22) Share a special childhood memory.
23) Talk about an issue that needs to be in the spotlight.
24) Highlight one of your other favorite creative distractions.
25) Have another writer join you for a post where your readers come up with three (or more) prompt words you have to create a story with.
26) Discuss a specific genre.
27) Talk about how you broke into a specific market and share a few tips.
28) Interview a publisher and get some tips for submitting to them.
29) Open the discussion about what a certain celebrity is doing.
30) Give a list of writing opportunities or writing contests.

These are just a few I came up with off the top of my head. What would you add to this list? We'd love to hear how you keep the subjects coming on your blog.

Chynna