Using Books as Inspiration to Overcome Writer's Block

Even the best writers hit a block sometimes. You know you want to write, but you just can't think of anything. You get frustrated, and you wonder when and where your next spark of inspiration is going to come from. Chances are, you have a readily available source of article ideas close at hand - your bookshelf.

There are a couple of ways you can use your bookshelf to your advantage. First, you might want to look through it and take inventory - what genres or authors do you have the most of? Which ones have you read more than once? Why did you feel compelled to buy them? Ask yourself these types of questions as you peruse your personal library.

Now, to expand on these questions. Take the first one - what genres do you have the most of? If you have a lot of sci-fi, nonfiction or fiction, there are a ton of articles you can write. You can write previews/reviews of upcoming books in that genre, or if there was one that "spoke" to you, you can write about why it did. If the book is about an event in history or an historical person, you might want to write about that event or person. Extra points if you can make it relevant to the present.

Moving on to the next question, what author do you have the most of? You can write about their inspiration behind certain novels, their upcoming works, even a biography - try to dig deep and go with information that isn't very widely known. Or, if one of their books has been adapted into a movie, you might want to compare the two versions.

Let's take a slightly different approach with the next question - which books have you read more than once. It seems simple enough - you wouldn't read a book once, let alone more than once, if there wasn't something in it that captivated you the first time. What was that something? Write about it. Maybe it helped you through a tough time, and you think it might help other people as well. Word of mouth can be a very powerful thing.

The last question, why did you feel compelled to buy them, can be either very easy or very hard, depending on what approach you want to take. A good example would be if you have a lot of self-help books. You know that the self-help section in many bookstores is among one of the largest. Why? Why do so many people turn to self-help books? Why did you? This is where the challenge comes in. You are in a sense exposing yourself, and exposing other people. You might be touching on some very sensitive subjects, and have a hard time writing about them. If you don't feel comfortable, don't push yourself, but try to keep that question in mind - why do people buy these books? Do they provide an escape or insight? Will you buy more of them in the future? Do you think other people will?

These are a lot of questions, but hopefully they give you an idea of how you can use your book titles to spawn your articles. And, if you have a large library, you are in an even better position to have lots of ideas. There is no limit to what you can do using this source of inspiration.