Pages Thursday, July 26, 2012 Get out of the road I used to be funny. Or at least fun. Do you remember when I used to be fun? Maybe not. That was a long time ago. I was thinking the other day that I miss that -- having fun with my writing. I've actually been thinking that for some time. I don't really enjoy writing about divorce and domestic violence and child pornography. Does anyone? But it's right in front of me, so I write about it. I remember sitting at a conference once and listening to someone talk about brainstorming topics. They would choose their topics a month out and then sit down and write their posts and schedule them. Ta da! I thought about doing that myself. For about two seconds. I think that's a great strategy for niche writers. But what if your niche is turning yourself inside out and spilling your guts onto paper? Hard to schedule that kind of thing. More importantly, I rarely know what I'm going to write until I sit down and write it. I might start writing about marriage, for instance, and end up with a post about how I learned to energetically occupy my own space. (True story -- I ended up lopping off the first two paragraphs of that post .) Little known fact. Lopping off the first two paragraphs of whatever you write is an excellent strategy for creating stronger, tighter posts. You might also want to lop