Mike Sansone over at ConverStations has a post about his blogging schedule, and I really like his idea of doing a “blogger’s warm-up” first.

Before he begins writing, he has a commenting warm-up routine:

“before I even think about my own post, I invest 15-20 minutes responding to comments on my blog and commenting on other sites. I find this gets me in a blogging rhythm. While commenting - a post formulates that I can bang out in another 20-30 minutes.”

After I read this, I realized I’d been doing something similar myself - just not consistently. But I find that making comments on other blogs and answering comments on my own blogs really does get me into the “blogger’s zone” - ideas for posts will come to me even if I hadn’t had a clue what to write.

I think it’s the combination of reading through my feeds, and also putting my fingers to the keyboard and getting them going. There’s a rhythm that just comes to you as you go tap tapping away in answer to something someone else has written.

Getting into that zone is always a nice feeling.

Mind you, I’m not an early morning runner, and so I doubt I’ll ever find myself beginning a commenting warm-up at 4:45 a.m.!