It does not take long to realize that posting from within WordPress is not the most efficient process. For me, two posts was enough… So, the hunt was on to find a desktop application to post with.
Gnome Blog is in the Arch repos, but is a bit basic. The main feature missing for my purposes was the ability to add a category to posts.
A search in the AUR found Drivel. It has several useful features, including the ability to add a category to posts (however, only one per post and not tags), being able to edit recent posts and integrated spell-checking. Even better, its development is now being continued after a several year break.
i like drivel too, good to know they started developing it again.
If drivel proves unsatisfactory, you might try what I do: I post to wordpress using the embedded editor firefox plugin. It uses mozplugger to paste a vim instance in place of the text area. I had to do some tweaking on the text area size settings to make sure it was big enough for my vim, but it works nicely.