Ideas for posts come to me from many sources, and I try to link most posts to earlier, related posts. Other law-related bloggers do not do internal linking as assiduously as I do, although admittedly I do not insert the URLs of the cited posts. Metacognition,” says Scientific Am., Vol. 296, May 2007 at 36, is “the ability to mull over what one knows.” Usually, as I forage among the 2,260 posts I have written, I mull over what I have written, what’s different about the material I am contemplating adding, and what deserves to be written.
Periodically I gather what I call metaposts. That neologism describes a compilation of all the posts from this blog that comment on a particular idea. Currently my collection, stored alphabetically by topic in a separate file, numbers more than 60 metaposts, among the topics of which are fixed fees, offshoring, outside counsel budgets, procurement, competitive bids, and many more.
Before there is enough material for a metapost, I generate proto-metaposts when I pull together a number of related items for the particular post I am writing. If I link back to a post that has one of those collections, I use the phrase “(See my post of [date] on some subject and references cited.).” Hence, if you want to see what relates to a post that mentions references cited, look in the chronological archives for that date’s post and examine the links.
Feedback from you would help me. Does anyone find the smaller collections (proto-metaposts) useful? Would anyone like to see the full-fledged metaposts?