I think I need two blogs, but I only want one. What I really want are nested blogs.
Here’s the thing, I have some longer-form things I may want to actually *write* rather than just think about writing, but long-form doesn’t really go over well in Blog World. So I’d like to have a place to put those that’s a little separate from my main blog, and then I’d like to use this blog to just gloss those a little and point to the longer essays in case anyone’s interest gets whetted. So I guess what I want is an “essays” page here that’s really another blog to house the essays.
I could use the “more” tag, but that would still dump the long essay in people’s RSS aggregators (I think), which seems a little inconsiderate of those who really don’t want to slog through more than a few paragraphs of my writing at a time.
I could use “pages” that are just not included in the navigation, but that would rely pretty heavily on a plugin. And besides, true masochists who might want to subscribe to those essays would be out of luck.
I could simply upload completely separate files and link to them, but I’d really like to avoid that scenario. For one thing, I doubt I’d ever actually do it if it required too many different types of composition platforms and upload steps. That starts to seem like work!
And if any of you suggest I go in for formal publication… but no, you wouldn’t do that to me, would you? I’m allergic to formal publication.
So I don’t know quite what to do, or if this is even a good idea. Any ideas?
What people are saying over on FriendFeed about this post...
Keep it all here. It’s easy enough for someone to start to read, decide to skip the rest, and move on to the next item in their feed reader. Besides, if you had two blogs, I’d need to subscribe to two feeds.
I agree with Michael. It is easy enough to pass on something if I don’t have the time to read it. Not that I don’t hang on every word you say. I would recommend separate blogs only if the other blog were on a completely different topic.
Well, the overwhelming consensus here and on FriendFeed seems to be to keep everything here, so I’ll start out with that. If it gets overwhelming, I’ll remove the essays from the main page and feed and set them up on their own page in this blog, with pointer posts here in the main blog. But hopefully it won’t come to that. And really, this will probably only be an occasional feature of the blog.
Meanwhile, I can just hear a bunch of people laughing at me as I talk about “long form” as if that’s not what I already write here. :-)
Actually, one of the good things about microblogging is it frees up blogs for people to write long-form essays (assuming they didn’t already – the Conventional Wisdom regarding long blog posts, as usual, isn’t).
Write as much as you need to on a given topic, no more and no less.
People can always pick through their readers and leave the long pieces for when they have time. I still get everything sent to gmail I know, how old fashioned), and I just star those i intend to read later and label them. Write away!
Ummm, what makes you think that blogging is for short stuff? I rather like the longer essays. And I would think that ItLwtLP would be a clear indicator that blogging can support the long essay approach. I even subscribe to a blog I like (it’s a craft blog) that does nothing but long posts — and I do mean Long!
By the way, I think it is possible to use categories and then create a feed for a specific category. You might look into that possibility for those who want everything but the long stuff.
Also, I think you may be underestimating WordPress. I don’t think you need a plugin for Pages. That is core WordPress functionality, I think.
I think I know the craft blog of which you speak. It’s one that I love, too, but I unsubbed because I didn’t have time to manage my reading list. So maybe this is as much about my own reading habits online as anything else.
Anyway, I like the idea of just having a “normal blog posts” feed for those who need it. I’ll look into that (though my initial attempts to set one up failed… I don’t know why).
And Pages are core functionality, yes, but hiding them from the navigation is not. You either have to go in and change your index.php file every time you add a new page that you don’t want to show up, or you have to install a plug-in. At least, that’s what the Internet tells me.
But what about putting a set of pages called something like “Cogent Thoughts” where you could put the longer pieces? I was going to post about the WordPress functionality, but see that it has already been addressed. I think that yes, as Michael Sauers points out, you would have to have two feeds, it is still workable.
I have not figured out yet why some blogs show up with the full text in my blog reader (Bloglines) and others do not. I always ask for the full listing when I subscribe. I will note that it is the Library Journal ones which are most annoying in that respect, and LJ does not seem to care!
Keep writing. I take away a great deal from your blog.
I wouldn’t break them out–as others have said, we can decide if we want to get through all of it in our feeds.
I broke out a separate blog more for personal/less library thoughts that were a little less “share with my director and my mom” nature but length was never really a question.
Ok ok. Clearly I was over-thinking it. Now… I wonder how long it’ll take me to get around to actually writing one of these things.
Thanks all!