Blogging basics: the quest for excellence

What led to today's post on blogging? I was going through one of my favorite's folder at my terrific feed aggregator, Bloglines, and realized that I had saved many on writing. We all want to become better bloggers. Here are some recent writing tips from others:

• "The Seven Basic Blog Posts" published at Wired.


• Teach Yourself Blogging," at Internet Marketing Ideas and Tips.


• "Keeping it Simple" at Web Applications Are the Future.


• "Start Your Glory File" at Get It Write. To quote:
  
  

  . . . some great suggestions, including writing down every good thing anyone has ever said about your writing. My version of this is what I call my “glory” file. There’s a paper file folder, where I put notes, cards and printouts of emailed comments. I also have an electronic file, where I copy snippets of praise to read through when I haven’t received any lately.

Blogging for many of us is also about surfing and sharing stuff from the web. This great surfing tool, Bloglines, has a number of handy features, including the (save as unread) feature that led to this post. It also offers very easy subscription to what seems like an unlimited number of different feed sources, folders for various categories of feeds, a story clipper, a blog, and a capacity to search for posts or stories. For example, the words "blog writing" is a search term that today produced 1,034,000 posts on the subject.

Like anything else, Bloglines has limitations. Any feed's folder will only hold 200 new entry headlines. When I want to read the full story I just click on the headline. After I have scanned that set of feed headlines, they all go away except those where I have checked the "save" box. So the feeds "fill up" with old stories unless I get back to them and un-check those in which I am no longer interested.

I checked several other favorites folders and found writers to whom I regularly turn. The first one was from Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com. An attorney, he writes in great detail, but it is readable. Juan Cole at Informed Comment is also a good writer. Professor Cole is perhaps one of the most knowledgeable authors on the Middle East.Dandelion Salad's posts I saved were quite numerous, perhaps because the site has a lot of contributors. Think Progress' posts on writing are good for any news junkie. Andrew Sullivan writes for The Atlantic.com.

To conclude, my favorites' folders are now more lean because the posts are now indexed under "excellent writing." The purpose of this post is to make sure that my search for excellence does not go away, not so long as it still fills me with satisfaction and the wish to learn a better way.

My topical post today at South by Southwest and The Reaction is about politics.

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