I have been trying desperately for the last couple of weeks to come up with an original idea for my next post. The result is that I have ended up with just one post in the last 15 days. That’s when I thought of writing on the very concept. ‘Originality in the blogosphere’, now that’s not something that you read everyday.
What made it so difficult for me to come up with a post was that I wasn’t merely trying to write on a popular subject. I was trying to find a subject that has never been dealt with (God, help me). Oh, it’s so easy to find a popular article, rehash it and then post it as your own without even crediting the original writer (For example, How to make money blogging, 5 tips to get back links to your site, etc). These are topics that have been beaten to death.
Even though every writer tries his/her best to add a different perspective to it, the article effectively is, on the same subject. If a reader were to search for the topic on a search engine, he would end up with 10 to 15 different links to articles that all talk about the same thing. It might be more variety for him but does he really have the time to browse through all of them?
Coming back to the topic, I had boasted in one of my earlier posts (in case you missed it)that it took me just 120 seconds to come up with an alphabetical list of ideas for topics. But creating ‘original’ articles out of them…hmmm…if only it were as easy.
Originality? Say’s who?
I began the futile exercise last week by creating a list of ideas that I would like to develop an article on. The list was as follows.
- 5 tips to improve your writing productivity
- How to write an article in 10 minutes
- Getting stuck thoughts and words to flow again
‘Impressive’, I said to myself!
And after doing my bit of mind mapping and creating a plan for the article, I start working on the first one of them. I am a fluid writer like most others in the profession and once I get into the flow, it hardly takes me a few minutes to come up with a rough draft of an article. Within 10 minutes, I had jotted down an 800 word first draft which I was highly impressed with. I was sure that this was going to be one of my better posts in recent times. So, I close the word editor and decide to take a break before getting back to the article for a second look.
I either surf or plug in my Ipod during my breaks. This time, I started surfing one my favorite blogs and suddenly, I find an article called, ‘Want to Boost Your Writing Productivity? Have a Baby!‘ by Michael Stelzner at Copyblogger. It’s a fantastic post! Even better than what I have managed to scribble down so far.
That was the end of my self induced originality bit and I decided to scrap my post. I mean, I loved the article so much that it would be an atrocity to post something on the same lines.
But I wasn’t going to be beaten psychologically. I am one of those stubborn-as-a-leech types and thought that well, two people from a population of 6,706,993,152? That aint bad at all. The very thought that only one person besides me, thought about the subject, was enough to cheer me up for a while. But wait, could there be more ‘rehashed copies’ of the same article floating around the internet? I had to be sure about that and so, I googled the topic. Bang! I got about 15 articles on the same subject in about 0.27 seconds (It’s fast, huh?)! I didn’t bother to check who wrote it first.
Here I was with 5 measly tips to improve productivity and there was one guy who had thought of 50 ways to do it. (It topped the Google search results). I didn’t dare search for the other topics but I am sure that there might be multiple versions of them existing as well. So, I realized that writing original ideas is not easy.
Is Blogging about being original?
But is originality really necessary? Are we committing a crime by giving our own perspective to a topic that has been written about by people who have a deeper understanding and a larger fan following? And if we are trying to come up with something completely original, does the bar become too high to exceed?
No, I feel that it isn’t a crime to give your own perspective to a topic. A lot of people do it. That’s the very essence of a blog. It’s a place where you can blurt out whatever you feel like and nobody can question you.
I mean, if someone has written about 100 ways to find happiness and you have found ways 101 – 110, then why not write about it? It would be wrong to scrap the idea simply because it was a popular post on a famous blog. But at least, you can make an effort to treat the post in a way that nobody else has. Give it a new heading, add a picture, change the flow, do something that the earlier writer didnt do.
A cloned article with different words and different headings (but has the same pitch, tone and thought process) is what you can ill afford. Not to forget that you are not really helping your blog by doing it. A reader would always prefer to read a better established blogger than you. (Imagine 10 different versions of Harry Potter doing the rounds of book stores. Would you prefer my version or that of J.K.Rowling?)
But originality, that’s something different altogether.
Think out of the box or in it? Originality is energy consuming
A lot of people advise to think out of the box to come up with innovative and original ideas. But, how does one think outside the box? For that matter, how does one think inside the box? What is the damn box?
Charles H. Duell said way back in 1899 that, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” That, I think, is thinking inside the box.
Similarly, are all original ideas for articles taken already? No. Not at all. All it takes is a serious rap on the grey matter for new thoughts to start jumping out, but, hey, it’s you who must give that rap. In Charles H. Duell, there is a clear unwillingness and fear to go beyond the obvious. The thought process is limited and it is the mind which sets these boundaries. As a writer, we have to try and break free from those boundaries in order to conjure up originality. Originality that stems from imagination.
The problem with a lot of writers on the World Wide Web is that they have been limiting their thinking and trying to blindly ape, ‘the best’ out there. (Even I have been guilty of doing that in the past) But what we do not seem to realize is ‘the best’, have reached that position because they did not follow anybody. They set their own rules, unconventional at times. And the rest simply followed them. That sir is thinking out of the box. The question that we need to ask ourselves as writers is, ‘Do we wish to be followers or leaders?’
The simplest definition of thinking outside the box is thinking unconventionally and it is far from easy. It requires a desire to explore, an ability to diverge from the conventional well-trodden path and the passion to live from your imagination.
I have decided to try and think outside the box in the days to come. I know that it’s far from easy. But at least, I will make an effort no matter what. I will do whatever it takes to go through more creative exertions. I will keep you posted on how I am faring on my effort to be original.
On a closing note, I would like to quote a famous aphorism.
‘If you only do what you always did, you will not even get what you always got’
Notes: Image Courtesy Flickr: – Originally uploaded by Orangecrazy
Of course, let’s not forget the fact that he had a head start way back before I did and has been a revelation of sorts since then.
