Every year during the Blogathon get to explore the word stylings of writers I’ve never read. In some lights, this could be a burden: I have limited time and so many good words to read. But in another light — the one I use to illuminate my life — there can’t be enough good writing in the world, and if I die not having read all of it, well, at least I will have given it a good college try.

So here are five blogs about writing I discovered through this year’s blogathon. These are habits in the making.

I read Jennifer Willis blog for the first time a few days ago. She commented on my blog post about RA and what I’m willing to risk to get rid of it. I clicked on her name and came to this post about her writing goals and how they intersect with her health. That’s all it took to hook me. I’ve had fun browsing around her site. She’s a fine writer. She should be really famous.

Janine Robinson’s Essay Hell hits close to home. Darling Son is 16 in a couple weeks. College applications are fast approaching, and while my son is a good writer — how gratifying to me! — he’ll need help with his college application essays and he won’t take it from me. From Janine? Maybe not. But from a website with a swear word in its title? You bet.

Jean Gogolin’s Writer’s Clinic blog is engaging. There’s always a question asked, a thought to ponder. It’s not just opining about writing, but asking for the reader to consider some aspect of the craft — humor, the merits of outlining for a big project, blood and gore.

For some of us, writing daily requires a prompt. And blogathons, writing challenges like NaNoWriMo, and contests are one way of doing that. Rosanna Rogacion’s Writing on the Pages of Life got me interested in her blog through a post that had a list of other writing events. It just takes a good post to get me interested enough in your site to start paging through. Good job, Rosanna! You caught me!

Marial Shea’s Marial Writes is a new favorite. Whether she’s pointing you to a great site like 750 Words or admitting her own fears about blogging (hey Marial! Look at the post I highlighted on Writing the Pages of Life — more prompts to making writing a habit.), she writes entertainingly. And you know me, I like a good read.

I still regularly read Michelle Rafter’s Wordcount  and Jennie Phipps’ Freelance Success blog, and there are others I read occasionally when someone points me to a particularly interesting post. But I’m open to reading other writing blogs regularly.

Do you have a suggestion? Leave a comment: I’d rather have too much too read than too little.