I was wondering through cyber space looking for blogs on the writing craft as I drank my morning coffee. I was trying to find more good blogs that are specific to writing. With all the blog directories and search engines sprouting up you’d think it would be easy to find writing specific blogs. But no, it’s not easy. Even the directories with topic specific categories are not as good a resource as they could and/or should be. It seems that any blog with the words “write, writing, muse, musings, etc” can be in a writing specific category. Well, what’s wrong with that, you might ask? What’s wrong is that every blog on the net has some form of the word “write” in their keywords and/or in their blogs description. So, what you find is a lot of blogs listed in a writing category that have nothing to do with the writing craft and nothing to do with the act of writing other than using writing as a form of self-expression. There’s nothing wrong with that but they should not be categorized in a writing specific topic.

I guess I find it frustrating since I work on a directory that categorizes Web sites but even there the Weblog specific topics are not well categorized. Part of the problem is that bloggers rarely stay on topic. They wonder around in their minds, dripping thoughts onto the screen, and report on their daily activities. Nothing wrong with that (I do it myself), it can even make a blog interesting to read but it also makes it hard to categorize them. I’m thinking it might be time to re-assess how to categorize blogs or maybe I mean that it’s time to assess, or explore, what is a good way to categorize them. The way the Web is currently categorized in directories will not work for blogs. By their very nature the vast majority are personal, even though they may stick to a single topic. Many should be categorized as personal blogs but there are perhaps just as many that do have a topic specific intention and even though they wonder off topic occasionally, they should be categorized in topic specific categories. It would help us, the reader, find what we are interesting in reading.

Some directories are listing topic specific blogs in with regular Web sites. I’m not sure that’s the best way but it’s better than listing them all, or the vast majority, under “personal blogs.” I think blogs deserve their own top level category in the major directories, like a directory within a directory where the blog category has all the same categories as the main directory. Yes, I know that there are blog specific directories but none are human edited, yet, and humans do it better than any automated system will ever be able to do simply because they look at what’s actually inside and do not rely on meta tags and word association. But who knows, maybe some programming genius will figure out how to give a bot eyes that can actually see and determine the contents relevancy to search phrases. Google did change the way we surf the net but even they have limitations and can be easily fooled by creative schemers, though I, for the life of me, can not understand why any Webmaster would want traffic that is not looking for whatever they are selling or offering. It’s just a waste of good bandwidth in my opinion but they probably know something I don’t.

I’m going to have to give categorizing blogs some more thought. Maybe I will setup my own blog directory or just setup an organized list of writing blogs with a personal review. Who knows what I might do? Even I don’t have a clue as to what might spark my creative juices in the future. The potential for a well thought out blog directory is limitless but my time is limited for now.

Speaking of wondering off topic, I started this post to offer some information about a blog on fiction writing that I stumbled on. I found it on another blog, which seems to be the best way to find writing specific blogs. It’s called The Fiction Writer’s Journey: Musings, Announcements, Exercises, and More to Inspire by Emily Hanlon, a writing coach and novelist. While this blog has some layout problems and it doesn’t appear to be updated regularly, the information that is there is informative and inspirational. I’ve added the link to my blog and recommend it to anyone interested in writing.