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I confess, I haven’t completed all the comment challenge prompts but I love this challenge! I still need to:

1. comment on a blog outside my niche

2. comment on a blog post I don’t agree with

and maybe something else, but…

I have been thinking deeply about blogging and how I can get even more out of the experience and this post is inspired by Chris Brogan is exploring the power of blog commenting.

Already, it has done wonders for my writing. I blog daily, that means I write daily. At first I was just writing my blog. I wrote about my passion for movies, about my work with the Hudson Valley Writing Project. I shared my digital stories, I created posts that included images and text, I shared posts from blogs I found powerful. I used my blog for collaborations with other bloggers. I fell in love with writing.

Slowly, as I began to read blogs from the NWP Tech Matters community, and got some comments I started reciprocating and the process began. It was slow. I grew impatient and didn’t always consider that to get comments you had to leave comments.

The invitation to participate in the Slice of Life Challenge for the month of March was eye-opening and logical. Usually I was one of 12 or more bloggers writing a life slice on my blog and linking to Stacey’s homepage. I returned often during each day and read other slices appearing. I got to know these writers and they got to know me. We continued after the month ended, with a week of poems and now we write together every Tuesday.

I read their slices and then I read more. And I get comments to my slices and I get more as well. Simple.

Of course there’s other experiences and other communities but regular comments seem to come from those bloggers I have connected with regularly and that takes time.

Beyond the comment there’s the discussion and that’s what I have come to consider during this challenge.

I have been thinking a lot about questions and conversations. I think that’s the next layer to develop, especially as I get ready for another Hudson Valley Writing Project Summer Institute and I’m hoping that edublogs will support me with a way I can create threaded conversations without moving to another network ie.ning.

Feels like I’ve written a lot about all this, but I’m still thinking about this. It’s exciting.