by Joe Wallace

I’m still reporting from the road, stopped in a Starbucks in Texas for a quick refill and update. The road warrior must have caffeine!

Believe it or not, it IS possible to get other freelance work done when you’re travel writing and blogging, but it’s not easy. I tend to save my actual work for when I’m off the road, but traveling does provide some great inspiration for queries and that’s what I concentrate on when I am mid-trip. It just doesn’t pay to torture yourself with deadlines when you’re on the go if you can avoid it.

But what do you do when highway hypnosis lulls your brain into that fuzzy-headed stupor and you can’t come up with any ideas to pitch or write about?

That’s when I use the mental version of what Rosalind Gardner calls a Swipe File. Gardner says it’s a great idea to file the ideas you get from other sources in an actual folder you can review later when you get stuck. I’ve been doing the mental version of this for years, but a physical envelope full of notes, screen grabs you printed for future reference, and other sources of story ideas makes a lot of sense. Especially if you are just starting out and need all the ideas you can get your hands on.

The Swipe File almost sounds like you’re creating a plagarism bin, but that’s not the point of this; the idea is to use the swipe file to inspire your own original article ideas. Don’t be afraid to take someone else’s article and stick it in your file, you’re just using it to kick start your own notions.

Doing this on the road is painfully easy–in flight magazines, the hotel-delivered USA Today, and that truck stop free paper could all be sources. What do YOU use?