How do I write for my blog?

I was tagged again for a meme by Beth. Beth is a crazy blogger (in terms of number of posts, not content) and I think I would have missed the tag, had I not traced it through the references to my blog on my sitemeter. The meme is 'how do you write for your blog'? It's the first meme I participate in with full enthusiasm. I was once asked the question how I could write so casually in a public blog, and I replied that I'm actually writing for a small group of people (Beth being one of them) and kind of forget that it's public. With the immense multitude of blogs I have no illusion that too many people are going to read it anyway.

One in a web2.0 call we were asked to summarize blogging in 3 words and I said: very public learning. Later I thought it is more thinking outloud (though that's only two words). I think the blog has become my place for thinking in text and pictures (and sometimes video), which is open to be read by others. But first at foremost, it is for myself. When I blog about an idea, it creates room in my head because I have it in my blog. Writing it down also forces me to formulate my ideas more clearly and sometimes I force myself to write some kind of conclusion. In that sense, it helps my learning process by forcing me to think through the ideas I have. I do use my blog a lot as my personal archive using the search function!

So how do my blog ideas start? It may that I read an article which has some interesting point of view which rings a bell, it may be something I experience, or a conversation I have. Always it is somehow a new insight or connection I make. Somehow blogging an article is safe. I do feel at times that I am not blogging my most important thoughts because you don't want to expose someone, or you can't write directly about clients/colleagues. I do want to move this a little as I think it will improve the relevance for others and myself at the same time. For instance, I asked a friend whether I could blog a story she told me and she agreed (coming to you soon). I'm also thinking of changing the title of this blog. I started with the idea of a topical blog, because I didn't want a personal blog and I wanted to learn more about CoPs for development. In the meantime, this topic starts to limit me in my writing as some posts seem too irrelevant for the topic (like this one).

People I would like to tag include Denise Clarke (as we discussed exactly this topic in Accra), The knowledgecafe guys, Wouter Rijneveld (I'm curious about his blogging process) and Anecdote (I'm curious how they are dealing with a corporate groupblog). And let me tag Bicyclemark (my latest blog discovery).