I think I already mentioned that as a writer, the disorganization of the “typical” blog bothers me, and that may be why, instinctively, I start doing things that “force” organization to blogs, like naming them “parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5,” for instance. But that very philosophy is somewhat contrary to blogs in general. The disorganziation and immedicacy is what appeals to many people… and then “twitter” took that one step even further…
For example, blogs appear in reverse-chronological order, so writing a “series” requires new readers who come upon the blog in the middle to either miss the beginning or “scroll down” to the start. But do they scroll down? I would, because I like organization. But that very requirement of having to scroll down just to get to the “start” of something troubles me. Perhaps it’s the writer in me… I know that novels begin on page one. But blogs begin on the date they started, and that first blog isn’t at the top of the blog; it’s at the bottom.
It’s even more problematic since I’m writing many of these blogs in advance, and usually writing multiple blogs on the same day, and then scheduling them to appear on different days in the future. For example, I started this “Trouble With Blogging” series on January 3, but am scheduling them to appear throughout January, with the last posting in the series scheduled for the end of the month. But if I keep having to worry about writing a “series” in order to force a particular organization, I am probably missing the point of blogs…
Speaking of which, I just saw a link in the WordPress help section called “Write a book” and of course, being president of Outskirts Press, that phrase intrigued me, so I read the tip in which WordPress outlined a process for organizing a blog in a more traditional, book-like manner. Judging from the amount of blogs I’ve seen that offer any sort of organization like that (namely, none), I’d say that doesn’t seem to be too popular of a topic on WordPress.
Perhaps what people are expecting to see when they click on a “Write a book” link is a procedure by which they can take the content of their blog and publish a book out of it, and to that, all I have to say is… “We can help you with that.”
President of Outskirts Press 