I’m trying to come up with a way that I can get in my writing quota for the day without having to cut out food and hygiene from my routine. This has caused some thinking in the direction of what a blog post is, and the essential bits they require to be ready for publication.
Post Type #1 - The Link
Many people do nothing but this, and the styles vary. I have a whole category for posts of this type, the Linklog. In it, I record something of interest I found on the we. Usually it’s just a single link, but can sometimes be a set of multiple related links. I will often include a little extra text to offer my opinion on the thing I’ve linked, such as “This is cool!” or “We’re doomed!”
The Link is nice because it lets you update the site more frequently without worrying too much about actual content. If all you post is links, then you don’t really have to generate text. There are even services, like del.icio.us, that will track your links for you, and publish them to your blog, too.
Obviously, I’m not crazy about calling this my primary blog content, since I shove these links into a sidebar category. But they do give me some way to say I updated my site on any particular day, even if it’s just a link.
Post Type #2 - The Tumble
Tumblelogging (am I spelling that right?) is a relatively new term coined to describe a short, spur of the moment, fleeting thought turned into a post. Many times, this post is where moblog entries are classified, because they’re often created on a phone and are short due to the comfort level of typing out an entry on a phone.
This post type seems like the annoying “I’m eating lunch now” that people who don’t like blogs complain about, but really it’s a great opportunity to consolidate entry ideas for later, keeping them where they’ll be used for fuel for a full post.
I like the idea of keeping track of fleeting but expoundable thoughts. I seem to have a lot more of these that would make interesting topics of discussion than I can reasonably record and write about. Still, this class of post shouldn’t ever rank as a full post, and would likely be relegated to the sidebar if I implemented it at all.
Post Type #3 - The Emotive
This post type is the first of the bunch that has an actual body to it beyond the sentence used to convey a single thought.
The trouble with this post is that it might start with a lot of sound and fury, there are no links, no research, no corroborating evidence. It doesn’t mean that the post is insignificant. Most blog posts on the web are this category, and that’s probably why some people don’t value blog content. Still, the offering of opinions and personal experience in an abbreviated form is quite useful.
Most of my posts get to this point and peter out, either due to time or interest. I get the personal experience part, but then don’t add any significant details to embellish the telling, or don’t adequately edit the post to make a cogent storytelling.
I would like to produce more of this content, perhaps rounding things out a bit better due to practice in the narrative effort. This post is likely to fill the bill for an Emotive.
Post Type #4 - The Paper
This final post type is not necessarily the longest, but usually is, simply because it requires more work.
Claims in the post are backed up with evidence from 3rd-party sources that are linked in the post itself. Conclusions are drawn, and points made based on the details of evidence. The whole of the post is drawn up neatly and presented in a well-edited form.
This post type doesn’t need to be a factual claim. It can be a work of fiction or a poem, or even a photo. But the fiction needs to be well-crafted and finalized. The photo needs to be of artistic merit, not just a snapshot of the kids being cute (which would qualify as an Emotive only if there’s text to accompany the post).
These type of well-crafted posts should show their worth. It should be clear to the reader that some effort has gone into their production beyond sitting and writing whatever comes to mind.
To demonstrate that this post is not a Paper-type, I have provided no external links to people who agree or disagree with my own categorization. No links to people who have their own classification system. I could improve this post by editing it at all or coming back to review it before publication. I could site authors who don’t value blogs because of this attention to detail. But I won’t because I’m lazy (and I’m also not currently connected to the internet, which is yet another reason that I can’t do any of the legwork on this post currently) so this post is a simple Emotive.
I would like to increase my production of Paper posts to one per week, or at least two per month. I want to write significant things, and I want the daily Emotive posts to be practice for the “real thing”.
I think I can accomplish this if I get some premises together to write about, choose one, concentrate on a draft one one day, find supportive links the next, rewrite on the following day, and finally publish an edited version. The process should take days and will get me in the habit of producing edited posts, which I hope will improve the quality of the site, if not the quantity.
