I haven’t been very inspired to write for a long time but I’m never too far away from my muse to not hear her calling to me. She prods, pleads, even tries to seduce me with stories just waiting to spill onto a page but I’ve become very good a resisting her, even ignoring her but she never stops and is always leading me back to her, even when I think I’m running away. Her latest trick, yes I said trick because trickery slides right past my resistance, was a subtle impulse to create an organized list of online writing resources. It took awhile for the impulse to take hold and actually drive me in that direction. I played at looking for writing resources and did a few posts on some of the sites I used to actively visit and participate on. It was like revisiting the past in the hope that it would inspire future movement toward writing. It didn’t and once again I chose a different path. At least I though I did.

I spent the last month upgrading to the latest version of WordPress and redesigning the layout of this blog. It was creative and creativity is what my muse thrives on, though she would prefer to be creative with words that paint masterpieces in the minds of those who might read her unique take on reality. I’ve resisted by doing creative things, anything that doesn’t require me to write, for others and that has kept me busy enough to fend off my muse and her seductive ways. But now I find myself with nothing to do creatively and feel a little lost. Now, I could take this time and take care of my home, you know, all the things that need to be done but have put off for the sake of creativity. But I don’t want to clean my house, rake the leave mounds in my yard, wash my truck, or any of the things I should be doing. No … I instead need to find my next creative adventure and writing wasn’t going to be a part of that plan.

I have a domain name that I purchased about three years ago that I haven’t developed a site for. The site is/was going to be about hair. Being a hairdresser for 40 years has given me a unique perspective on the industry and I have a lot of information I can offer, not on how you should style your hair but more about taking care of your hair and how to communicate with your hairdresser. It was going to offer basic information on the science behind hair color and permanents and what can and will happen to hair when chemicals are introduced, even when done professionally. The site was to have reviews on professional hair care products and what should and should not to use and why. But the concept has not even begun its metamorphose. Why? Because it will require a lot of writing! But more than that it will require me to organize the information in a way that will be useful for others. Note the two words, writing and organize because I’m leading up to uncovering the trick my muse has masterfully executed. In fact, it was so well executed that I didn’t discover it until I started writing this post.

I have another domain that I purchased when I decided to explore being a website host. My plan was to start out small and only host for people I know, mostly friends. I started out with one client and I currently have 5 clients, all of which I designed sites for. After having to move my clients from one reseller account to another because the original host I used disappeared, I decided that hosting wasn’t my thing. As a reseller I can not charge the low prices that many hosting providers can offer now and in order for it to actually provide a moderate income I’d have to service a lot of clients, much more than I want to be responsible for. I just do not have the knowledge required to become a system administrator, nor is that something I want to learn more about.

So, my hosting domain just sits there with a coming soon message on it. With nothing else to do I started exploring what I could do with that site. My initial thoughts were to develop and sell website templates or to sell someone else’s templates but that didn’t stick. It wasn’t exciting enough. I like designing for people I know or for people I can get to know. I think a sites design should say something about the owner and the best way to accomplish that is to know something about them. Designing for some enigmatic person just doesn’t inspire me. Then I began to think about moving all my posts about computer security and spam issues over to that domain and create a directory of authoritative sites offering information on computer security and spam issues. I think it’s a good idea. I have people asking me for security guidance all the time. If I can send them to an organized list of sites with computer security focused products and information, it could save me some time in the long run.

Deciding that a niche directory was something I could easily do, since I have several years experience editing on several large web directories, I went in search of a script I could use to create my little niche directory. I found one but in the process I also found myself wanting to use it to create a directory of websites about writing. I knew that linking to sites about writing in my sidebar would be impossible. Well, not impossible but it wouldn’t be easy for anyone visiting my blog to find what they may be looking for and it would make my sidebar very long and cluttered. To be honest, I have no idea why my focus changed from a computer security directory to a writing resource directory. I have the ability and enough interest to create either one. Somehow my muse planted a seed that I believed to be an oak tree when in reality it was the beginning of a whole damn forest.

I have setup the script but I’m still tweaking the design and layout. There are a few things I want to add to the script but one was out of my skill range so I’ve asked for help. I’m hoping it will be possible to implement the feature I want, we’ll see soon enough. In the mean time I’m working on the directory’s structure, the organization of categories. I was doing some research on the categories and came across a site about writing or creativity with a writing focus. That site spawned this post but as you can see, I went in an entirely different direction. I started writing this with the intent of give my visitors a good writing resource to explore without a whole lot of commentary from me. Surprise, surprise, here I sit after spending my whole morning writing a post about not writing which is, even to me, unbelievable. I’m in absolute wonderment of my muse.

I think I will call my muse Silvia. There is one person in the world that might know why I chose that name. If she happens by and reads this post, I know she will smile. I will post about the site that spawned this post tomorrow. It deserves it’s own space and some of my visitors may not read far enough to see it if I place it here.