For me, it's practice. Every month or two, I'll write a comment of high enough quality that I'll turn around and re-post it elsewhere because it captures whatever point I was trying to make much better than I've ever seen it said or previously written. HN delivers the right amount of quality and pseudonymity to give me both the motivation and feedback on how I communicate ideas.
That's similar to what I tried to do, or rather what I thought I was doing for awhile. I'd consider HN a place for "early drafts" of blog posts, idea being that I'd stumble upon something thought-provoking here, be inspired to make a novel observation, and then use that as the seed for a full blog post.
In practice, I just kept writing more and more of these "early drafts" and didn't write any blog articles for nearly a year.
In practice, I just kept writing more and more of these "early drafts" and didn't write any blog articles...
-- Is this a net positive? Or Negativer?
Seems like it could go either way. HN inspiring you to write down an idea/develop it you otherwise would not have. And perhaps providing feedback/criticism (on a point-by-point-basis). Both of those are good things. OTOH, if the idea ends up only partly-developed, never fully, and you move forever on ("itch=scratched"), then perhaps it is worse, because in effect it keeps you from developing /any/ ideas fully. Did you write other blog posts (from other motivation)?
I'd suggest writing down all of your ideas in a separate file, along with the "early draft" HN comment, and then making it a point to dequeue them into full-blown blog posts on a regular basis.
Commenting is for engagement, rather than broadcasting, no matter how much lurkerbaiting you tell yourself you're doing.
