Friday, June 3, 2016

On Discussion Posts

One of the most difficult posts for me to come up with ideas for are my discussion posts. Sometimes I hit a stretch where I get plenty of ideas and can write up three or four of these posts in the space of a couple of days, but usually, they are a struggle.

I think for me this is because all my other posts have a basic template. Book reviews are super easy because all I have to do is write down my thoughts on a topic. I love most of the Top Ten Tuesday posts because they give me that perfect balance between structure and freedom - and usually have topics that I find really fun. All my other little features - like Take Five and My Writing and my new Obsessing Over - are posts that have a general idea behind them before I work on the posts.

But my discussion posts are so open and free. My only requirements is that it either has to be about books or book blogging - and I think that gives me way too many choices.

Sometimes when I have general ideas, I make note of them on my Word Document that I use for my blog. But that has left me with over two full pages of 'title' ideas and, with most of them, I don't even know what my idea was for the post to begin with.

I also have a couple of ideas that I've written a couple of paragraphs each for, but then I stopped because that seems to be the extent of my ideas on the subject.

So, yeah, these are difficult posts for me. (And, me being the genius I am, I decided I want to post a discussion post a week. What the hell was I thinking!?)

One thing I do occasionally that seems to help, is troll other blogs. Not the small ones that I tend to follow anyway, but the huge, multi-person blogs, and sometimes they give me a topic idea for my discussions.

How about you? Do you post discussions? Are they easy for you or difficult? If they're difficult, where do you come up with your ideas from? And, heck, if they're easy for you, why? Where do all those ideas come from?

Comments (4)

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Haha, I wouldn't be the right person to talk about discussion posts because I myself wrote my firs t one just a few weeks back! But I do agree with you wholeheartedly on this one- coming up with topics. and worse, sitting down and actually writing everything that pops into my head is probably the hardest thing ever! I think I'm worse than you here. I have plenty of ideas in my head- and some of them come at the most inconvenient times, I tell you- but I just can't find the patience to sit and write them down. I like to think I'm improving at this, though :D Great, erm, discussion! :))

Ruzaika @ The Regal Critiques
1 reply · active 457 weeks ago
Congratulations! I know I was so proud of myself for writing my first discussion post - even though, by now, I can't even remember what it was about. It seems like I get my best ideas when I'm so far away from a pen and paper and by the time I can actually write them down, I've long forgotten what they were. Either that or I have a brilliant idea and when I actually go to write it down, it looks scatterbrained and pretty much makes no sense. I will say, it does seem like they get easier with time, so I wish you lots of luck!
I'm so like you when it comes to discussion posts, I get lots of ideas then don't know how to implement them. I have a list of discussion topics but I have no clue what direction I originally intended them to go so I'm not certain when they are going to get written. I think I have the most luck when I start writing my post as soon as an idea springs to mind. I don't know, I think it all depends how dedicated to my discussion I am, those random thoughts ones tend to go nowhere, but thing I'm actually interested in can get written quite easily.
1 reply · active 457 weeks ago
Too often I get a wonderful idea but I literally can't write it down, even part of it, and by the time I can, it seems like all the good ideas have left. Yeah, I think I have way too many random ideas that sound brilliant, but really, really aren't. I need to be a little more strict with those ideas I want to turn into posts, I guess, and go after the ones that stick in my mind.

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