Where Do Writing Ideas Come From?

I have a few blogs that I write articles for. The commitment isn’t all that huge, really. It amounts to a dozen or so obligatory articles for my paying clients. Once I add the articles I should write for my own blog, I’m looking at about 20 articles a month. At first blush this doesn’t seem too cumbersome. The problem is that the months sure seem to be rolling around faster and faster. Seems like I just finish the articles for a month and all of a sudden I’m behind in my postings again. Okay, I’m not griping about being busy, but sometimes it can be durned tough to come up with decent ideas for blog articles. I suspect it may be easier if I didn’t wait until the last danged minute but hey, apparently I’m a work-under-deadline-pressure kind of guy.

Here are a few places I turn to for article ideas:

• Twitter. You would be amazed at the number of articles ideas that come from looking at my Twitter stream. At any given point, there are interesting conversations taking place and links to interesting articles being tweeted and retweeted. Sometimes just the title of a link will get my wheels turning for a blog post idea.
• Facebook – See above. The folks in my timeline often include links in their status updates. Since a lot of my Facebook friends are writers there are usually a lot of great articles about writing. Also, there are times when the comments take off in a direction that inspires a blog article idea for me.
• Stumbleupon – Okay, I know this is also an excuse to surf but I love using Stumble for article ideas. With Stumbleupon, you never know what you’re going to get. My interests include topics that fall into the genres that I need to pay attention to in order to find blog articles. I throw a few other interests into the mix just for fun and each time I click the stumble button I’m presented with another possibility. I have found pertinent articles that I otherwise would never have found. Because I use the Stumbleupon Chrome extension toolbar, I can always open a new tab to keep stumbling if there is a particular article I want to keep “up” for a while.
• Titles – I know it’s a bit odd, but a lot of article ideas for me are born of a title or phrase that I think is catchy. Something I see or hear will spark a title and I’ll build an article around that title. Bass-ackwards I know, but it seems to work for me.
• Blog Subscriptions – I subscribe to blogs that interest me. A lot of times when I am stumped for what to write, a blog subscription will show up in my inbox and provide me with a great idea for the next article.

I have to admit that there are times when none of these things work for me. I get a block going on and getting the first article done seems almost impossible. However, once the first article gets done I usually can fall into the mode and hammer out the rest of what I need.

How about you? Where do you get your writing ideas from?