Creative writing isn’t just for wannabe John Grishams or Janet Evanoviches. Even if you have no ambitions of penning the next great American novel, creativity can be one of the best ways to draw people into whatever you’re writing — whether it’s a law brief or a biography for your law firm’s website.

If you write in a particular niche, such as legal marketing, you can find yourself recycling the same content over and over again without realizing it. Staying creative keeps your content fresh and your audience entertained.

Of course, creative legal marketing can be tricky if you’re not prepared. Here are 10 tips to keep your creative juices flowing while you write:

1. Try a new format. If you usually start the day blogging, do some whitepaper research and writing instead.
2. Reach out on social media. Tell other people what you’re writing. You may hear back great ideas, including unexpected twists that will make your project even better.
3. Embrace writer’s block. Words aren’t flowing? Take a break to do another task or grab lunch. Enjoy the time off rather than beating yourself up.
4. Enlist a friend. Ask a trusted friend to read what you have written and be completely honest if it sounds too similar to things you wrote in the past.
5. Reread old documents. Find a writing project you knocked out of the park a few years ago and use it to inspire your next one.
6. Watch a movie or TV show. Find a show or movie involving the law, and listen to the dialogue. Ponder what the writer was trying to convey in each scene.
7. Read a book. Pay special attention to the flow of the writing, especially when they describe legal topics. Try to emulate that flow in your current project.
8. Write about something new. If you spend all your time writing about the same subject, your writing can become dull. Every couple weeks, take a timeout to write something new. Work on a new page for your website or write a guest post for a blog about one of your areas of passion.
9. Engage with other people. When you’re writing, it’s easy to become closed off and antisocial. But being around people can help put you in a better frame of mind, which will lead to better writing.
10. Go for a walk. Take a break, and go for a walk, run, or bike ride outdoors. Seeing new things and hearing different sounds could help you figure out a new approach to writing that newsletter you were so stuck on while sitting at your desk.

At Lawyers Writing for Lawyers, we’re always brainstorming how to stay creative with legal content writing, so we never get bogged down with old ideas. Contact us today to discuss your legal writing needs.

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