It turns out that you don’t have to write alone, and that you don’t have to have all the answers (or all the ideas!) at the beginning.

I’ve been using Twitter to share ideas related to upcoming blog posts. For example, I asked people what kept them from taking notes, and I added their thoughts to a blog post that I was writing. I shared something I realized about dealing with uncertainty by making potential outcomes arbitrarily better, and that led to a back-and-forth conversations that helped me clarify what I meant.

Condensing an idea into 140 characters is a great exercise. Bonus points if there’s a question in there too.

Sometimes I share post ideas before I’ve drafted the posts so that I can see if an idea resonates enough to make me want to write it. Sometimes I share the idea after I’ve outlined or drafted the first version so I know what I think. I don’t ditch post ideas if they don’t get a response, but I mix in people’s feedback whenever I can.

I also use Twitter to share links to some blog posts after they go live, but the conversation seems more interesting if I don’t start it with a monologue. Besides, editing an upcoming post to incorporate people’s thoughts is much easier and more useful than updating something that people have already seen in their feed readers. The Share a Draft plugin is great for giving people links to unpublished posts. ScribeFire is great for editing existing posts.

Another benefit of writing posts in advance is that by the time you get around to folding people’s insights into your post, you probably have enough distance to edit your first version ruthlessly. If you do this at least a few days in advance, you can even go back to the people who shared their thoughts with you and see if you’ve quoted them properly.

If you blog, try giving people a sneak peek at upcoming thoughts and asking them for feedback. You can do this through e-mail or through social networks. I like social networks like Twitter and Facebook more than e-mail because other people can see and build on responses, but feel free to use whatever works for you. Enjoy!