Article Directories: Are They Ignoring History?
I have researched two novels, and heaven knows I’ve learned a lot about the women of the Civil War era, which is my favorite topic. Why not share my knowledge with others? I was ecstatic. No more mailings, no more waiting for a response, just write an article or story and send it off to the Blogosphere. If I'm lucky, someone might actually read it, which is the fervent dream of most writers.
I spent a whole afternoon researching article directories on the Internet. I have a blog about Civil War Women, but I’m fairly new to the online writing biz, so I was very excited to see that there are many places for me to submit my articles online. But my joy turned to disappointment when I discovered that most article directories don’t have a category for history.
I soon realized that articles about things that affect our daily lives are most popular. OK, I can understand that, but have we forgotten that we can also learn from history? I find it fascinating to learn how people lived in the past. Does no one else? The recent success of fiction and nonfiction books concerning the Civil War tell me that somebody out there is reading it.
Almost every article directory has a “writing” category. I can submit articles about writing, but there is no proper category for my writing. No history, no Civil War, no women’s history. Crazy isn’t it? Where do we amateur historians submit out stuff?
The first category in almost every directory is “Arts and Humanities/Entertainment.” When did writing get dumped from the arts? There are always subcategories for poetry, photography, even pottery! And isn’t writing entertaining?
As I continued my search, at a few sites I found some subcategories for history, but I don’t want to be stuck under such categories as “Reference and Education.” People had rather take nasty-tasting medicine than to go there. And how would you like to be classified under “other” or “miscellaneous?” Some put history under “Society” or “Politics.”
A few sites have a history category or subcategory, but there are no articles in them. I guess that shows me what people aren’t interested in. There are lots of clone directories, with the same categories and the same boring layouts, and few articles under any category. One site said to suggest a new category, which I plan to do.
When I searched the directories, there were very few articles about history. Maybe I should just rethink this whole situation.
Copyright © 2006 Maggie MacLean
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