I guess this is as good as any other time to talk about my goal of challenging myself (and all you thinkers) in the 2015 Book Blog Discussion Challenge. Part of my resolutions this year involves shooting out more content, and while I was already intending on attempting one discussion per week (or every two weeks minimum), I figured this would [hopefully] give me more incentive to blog more consistently. My goal is to break into the “Chatty Kathy” category (perhaps the bro-counterpart is like…Kenny or something) with 25-36 discussion posts over the course of this year. As of late, I’ve found inspiration to write complain about a lot of things and have curated a bunch of nonsensical topics that I hope are as fun to read as it is to write.

Like myself, many bloggers in this community seem to want to delve into more feature/discussion posts to expand their discussion repertoire. From the various participants in my recent 2014 Book Blog Survey, there are some information gathered that may be of interest to you (or maybe not). The most notable results concerning discussions was the interest in viewing more “interesting and unique topics” with “controversial and hot topics” in a close second. Even “rehashed/common topics” has a place in discussion writing and [still] does garner attention. It might even be a rite of passage into the community to write a tag-related post or reading/reviewing habits. But as much as this information is to give examples of what people may be looking to read about, you should always do you—whatever that may entail—to use that voice of yours, and everything else will follow.

In addition to all of this, many have indicated that they would be willing to comment on other commenter’s comments but rarely do I see this happening. It typically remains a one-on-one dialogue between the poster-and-commenter. And that’s a problem area I need to work on in particular; to develop my prompt writing such that the probed responses can be responded to by other readers and not solely the discussion author. (I’m always open to suggestions on how I can achieve or develop this further because I’m unsure how I can prompt a third person to respond to a comment without prompting them with a question and only through another’s response. Dubious, I know. So hit me up if you know of any trade secrets!)

So yeah, I’m hoping to deliver on the promise that I’ll be able to maintain my creativity and delve into brain-picking discussions. If you’re new to thoughts and afterthoughts, my brain craps out random topics like:

#2 – Lack of Sustenance is the True Antagonist (07/20/14)
#3 – The Standards of Unique Character Names (08/08/14)
#6 – The (Not-So) Villainous Monologue (01/25/15)
#8 – The Diminishing Utility of Love Triangles (02/07/15)

Yeah my brain is a weirdo and only I can hate on the thing haaaaah. #shamelessadvertising.

If you’d like to take the pledge of challenging yourself to write more discussions, feel free to join in on all of the fun at the [Book Blog Discussion Challenge] hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight. Or if you don’t blog, follow the twitter hashtag #LetsDiscuss2015 for updates.

Coolbeans, right?

Cheers,
Joey