Blogger Inspiration
Caryn Shechtman
Wednesday, 21 January 2009 03:16 UTC
I am about to start as part of a group blog for the soon-to-be Nature Network NYC hub. Since I a fairly new to this, I was wondering if some of the more experienced bloggers could offer some advice on where their inspiration comes from. I have some ideas of my own, but they say nothing can substitute experience.
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Replies
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The sources of inspiration come from various places:
They can come from withing – thoughts, ideas and feeling brewing inside of you, just waiting to be released into the public, free for everyone to see.
They can come from the RealWorld around you – your life, lab, people. This can be tricky as people whose actions you may want to comment on have not asked to be made public.
They can come as a response to what another blogger wrote. There have been many times when dozens of blog posts were written as a part of the same conversation. And the good thing about it is that the bloggers, by posting provocative stuff, ARE asking for a response by other bloggers.
From the media: science news, or news in general. Usually with a critical eye: did the writer/journalist correctly describe what the study in question actually did?
From the peer-reviewed literature directly, old or new. Useful to tag it for Researchblogging.org.
There are also several ways to maintain discipline by being proactive instead of reactive. For instance, you can have your own Friday feature. Or write posts specifically for inclusion on various carnivals.
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Thanks for your advice Bora. Keep you eye out for the future NYC hub group blog!
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The nature.com blogs tracker and Scintilla are two ways to keep an eye on what is being published/posted, what are the popular discussion topics, etc. You can customise Scintilla, and the blogs tracker provides plenty of breakdowns by subject, popularity, etc. Good luck!
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