It is the cement block that all writers carry on their backs: Finding themes. Recently, that cinder block has gotten even heavier, as you’ve probably discovered if you have a Twitter account, a blog or two, and a couple of publishers who keep asking for articles.

Like many writers, I find Twitter especially challenging. Yes, it’s a wonderful tool for engaging potential readers and it’s fun to use. I soon lost my fears about the dreaded 140 character limit.

But what am I going to tweet about? This morning I had breakfast, watered a couple of plants, and made plans to go out for pizza with my husband. If those bits of information seem boring to me, what are my readers going to think?

Worse yet, my specialty (writing, grammar, and usage) does not lend itself to infinite variety. How many times can I charmingly write about, say, an indefinite pronoun reference? Once, if I’m lucky.

When I asked a tech-savvy friend for advice on posting to Twitter, he advised me to just keep reading other users’ Tweets. Inspiration will come, he assured me. And he was right.

I finally realized that there’s a wonderful tool right on top of my desk that can help me find topics to tweet and blog about: My Calendar. Another great tool arrives at my door every day: the newspaper. And my car radio is another wonderful resource.

Let me start with the calendar, a treasure trove of tweet and blog ideas. One afternoon I sat at my desk with a notepad and calendar, looking through each month for events that might have a link to writing. It didn’t take long to find more than a dozen of them.

Of course, there is National Grammar Day (March 4). But what about the rest of the year? Well, I can tweet about the apostrophe on New Year’s Day. Come Easter, I plan to tweet about jelly beans (one or two words?) and marshmallows (why the capital “P”?). You get the idea.

Let’s go to the newspaper. Unfortunately, there isn’t a single Republican presidential candidate with a name that ends in “s” (why did Mitch Daniels have to opt out of this year’s primary?). goal a recent blond comic strip about the “Ditherses” (Julius Dithers is Dagwood’s boss) led to a publication about plurals and apostrophes in surnames.

A newspaper story quoted someone using the words preselect Y prune – inspiration for a blog about excessive use of pre. I’m enjoying this year’s presidential run because it provides a constant supply of errors and questionable grammatical constructions for tweets and blog posts.

But what if you are not a grammarian? The answer is that it will probably make it even easier for you to discover topics. For example, I have a website about writing police reports. New Year’s Eve provides an opportunity to write about drunk driving. Breaking news can often be linked to report writing. The White House recently directed the Justice Department to adopt a new definition of rape.

Gardening, parenting, teaching, sports, cooking… all vary with the seasons and all make the news from time to time. I have a friend who writes adventure stories about terrorism; he can find plenty of material for tweets and blog posts in the daily news. Another friend who recently wrote a YA novel about bullying discovered endless headlines about the problem.

Do you still have doubts? You’re not the only one, but I bet I can convince you. Just yesterday a friend who is a physician’s assistant tried to convince me that medicine doesn’t vary with the calendar. Really? What about flu season, swimmer’s ear, hay fever, sunburn, icy sidewalks, and New Year’s resolutions to get healthier?

Here’s an initial list of resources you can search for writing topics. What others can you think of?

• a calendar listing holidays and other special days
• the daily comics in your newspaper
• the internal newsletter at work
• a walk through a hardware store
• a walk through a grocery store
• a walk through a large store, such as Wal-Mart or Target

And here are some news sources with great websites you can visit for inspiration: the New York Timestea Los Angeles Timestea Christian Science Monitortea Washington Postand National Public Radio.

This approach to finding writing topics works much better for me than the traditional “discovery exercises” advice: brainstorming, mind mapping, the 5 W’s (Who, What, When, Where, why), and so. Having taught college writing for 30 years and written two writing textbooks, I am an expert in all of these methods. And I’m here to tell you that they are…limited. And frustrating.

The problem? When you do a discovery exercise, you are looking at a blank sheet of paper or an empty computer screen. The only input is what is already in your brain. That’s great if ideas fly so fast that your pencil can’t write them fast enough. The reality, however, is that the reason you sat down to do a discovery exercise in the first place is that you are out of ideas.

Why not just open a newspaper, flip through a calendar, or visit a website that features commentary on current events? I guarantee that in just a few minutes you’ll be running to your keyboard with at least three great ideas. And you’ll have fun doing it, a sure sign that you’re on your way to a successful writing experience.