Writing articles is a great proven way of driving traffic to your website or a product your selling. But what do you do when the ideas dry up and you are faced with the scary Blank White Screen, writers block, we have all had it. Many people say just try and plough through it, this is hard work, what about another solution.

Mind mapping is a great tool when faced with many creative blocks and has a long history of success. Tony Buzan is probably the most famous exponent of this technique and his books will help you refine your mind mapping abilities. Here is a simple method that is directly useful to generate writing ideas, that I have used many times.

First get a large piece of paper and in the centre draw a shape with your name. Now sit for a minute and thing of all the skill and abilities you have learned over your lifetime, also any experiences you have had. From the central name put lines off going to other keywords of the skills, abilities and experiences you have had. From these keywords put other lines going outwards to other ideas or keywords that you can expand these too. Too give an example, one of my skills is hypnosis, which leads too NLP, relaxation, meditation, therapy, these few examples can then be expanded to other things. Maybe lead to dealing with the public, relaxation techniques, funny experiences, different techniques, and the list is endless. Each of these things creates another link, after 5 or 10 minutes of expanding on this, I always recommend, leave it go make a coffee. When you go back to it look at the list of keywords you have expanding from you, these are all skills or experience that are personal and I'm sure one at least will spur on a good article. The good thing with starting off with yourself as the starting point, is that the expanded keywords are personal too you so easy to use. These will lead to articles you do not really need to research, because there existing skills or experiences, which makes writing the article so much quicker.

Remember this example was just related to a person's own experience, your starting point could be anything, but it will undoubtedly lead to ideas for many articles. I hope this helps get your creative juices going and I look forward to reading your many great articles.