A.N. Singh’s Point of View: How to come up with an idea for a column

Expressing an opinion through writing is not an easy task, because you don’t know if your choice of words and style of writing will illuminate your thoughts and ideas properly.

You begin to doubt yourself, and overthinking about how readers will react to your written work can demotivate you and even hinder you from writing a good text.

But how do you come up with an idea? One that you feel comfortable writing about.

You use your personal experiences.

Write about what you know, about the things that you have experienced and learnt in your life. Write to express yourself, to voice your opinion. Write what you want to write about.

Using your own personal experiences is a good way to develop an idea for a column, and not much research goes into it because you already have the information.

Though research is a fundamental aspect of writing an article because you would need to have the knowledge about the topic you are writing about. Experience is still the best way to write about a topic.

But why do this? Why use experience as the foundation? Because this is what readers can relate to.

One of the most important things to do when writing a column is to engage with your reader; by writing for yourself, you are in a way, writing for others as well.

Make your readers think. Make them realise that they are not the only ones who feel like this, or thought that way.

For instance, every article that I have written so far included a personal element.

The first article I wrote, ‘Practical is more important than theory’, was heavily influenced by my experience as an accounting student.

I wrote about the difference between studying accounting and doing the actual job.

I wouldn’t have been able to write about this if I didn’t gain the necessary experience at an actual working environment.

To decide what you want to write about, think about which important aspect of life you want to discuss.

If you are driven enough, that moment of your life that you want to speak about would be clear as day.

The words will be floating in your mind, and once it’s there, just write. Get everything out onto the page or screen and while writing, do not edit!

Self-editing your written work is crucial, but never edit during the writing process. Write first; edit last.

You could also write about your interests. What are you passionate about? What do you enjoy? Reading, writing, dancing, music, sport, food, family, politics.

Even in this instance, you would use your personal experiences in your writing.

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