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?