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Interview with
The Bloggers
Conducted by
Dan Wickett
on
10/29/2004
Recently I've stumbled onto, or into, the world of Literary Blogs - websites where an individual (or in some cases, individuals) comment on a variety of things that have some link to the literary world. The sites typically are updated daily, if not more often, and frequently allow for reader feedback, which then becomes part of the site for future readers. Having discovered a group of such sites that I find myself returning to regularly, I asked the bloggers at these if they'd be willing to participate in sort of a blogger's e-panel. The following have honored me with positive responses: Mark Sarvas - The Elegant Variation - http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/ Dan Green - The Reading Experience - http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/ Maud Newton - Maud Newton - http://maudnewton.com/blog/ Laila Lalami - Moorishgirl - www.moorishgirl.com Tom Rakewell - Rake's Progress - http://rakesprogress.typepad.com/rakes_progress/ Ron Hogan - Beatrice - www.beatrice.com Carrie (CAAF) A.A. Frye - Tingle Alley - www.tinglealley.com Sarah Weinman - Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind - www.sarahweinman.com Scott Esposito - Conversational Reading - http://esposito.typepad.com/con_read/ C. Max Magee - The Millions - www.realisticrecords.net/themillions EWN: Thank you all for participating and passing along information about your blogging experiences. First of all, as I don't see much income generation on your sites, what do you all do for a living? Sarah: Hmm, good question. I suppose I'm in flux at the moment, having only recently moved to Toronto to pursue opportunities there. But I'm a scientist by training, forensics in particular, so when not writing, that's what I'm trying to break into. CAAF: Until recently I was working for a plumbing-supplies firm here in Asheville. I resigned in September to finish a novel I've been working on called ALEX & BABETTE DO WICCA, with the idea that I'll go back to work next April. In the meantime, I do some brand consulting and freelance copywriting to pay the bills, and I also write book reviews and other articles for Asheville's alt weekly, Mountain Xpress (www.mountainx.com). Mark: Guinness product tester, professional complainer and dissembler. Dan: Part-time/adjunct college teaching. I also write, but no "living" has ever resulted from it. Maud: I escaped the practice of law a few years ago. Now I work as an editor (but not in fiction publishing, so I probably won't be able to help you place that unpublished manuscript) and attend a creative writing program at City College part-time. Tom When I'm working, which is less-than-regularly these day, I'm an Instructional Designer, independent contract. Laila: I'm a linguist. Ron: I write. Scott: I'm in the Marketing/Catalog department of a book distributor. My job is to work with some of my company's client publishers to get information on their new titles in our seasonal catalogs, and help market their books. Max: I recently left my job at Book Soup bookstore in Los Angeles to attend the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, after which, Masters' in hand, I hope to be much more employable. EWN: If you don't mind, in an attempt to determine if this ability to blog has any restrictions, what ten year age range do you fall into? Twenties, thirties, etc.? Sarah: I'm twenty-five, so I guess mid-twenties would sum me up exactly. CAAF: Sadly, older than the Old Hag. In the thirties (33). Mark: Just barely sneaking into the end of the 30s, but not for a whole lot longer. Dan: Forties. Maud: Technically, I'm 33, although I have this idea that 33 is the last good year. Unfortunately, it's impossible for me to enjoy something if I know it's going to end. So I say I'm 34, and next year I'll say it's my 34th birthday again. Nobody really pays attention after 30, anyway. Tom Twenties. I'm 28, to be specific. Laila: Thirties. Ron: 30s. Scott: Recently turned 26. Max: 26, for now. EWN: When did you begin your blog? Sarah: First post was in October 2003; the revamped version with a domain name launched in June of 2004. CAAF: Early June 2004. Mark: I launched The Elegant Variation in a fit of madness on October 14, 2003 with a declaration of my love for James Wood and my loathing for Steve Almond. Nine months later, my positions remain unchanged. Dan: January 2004 Maud: It began as a simple Blogspot affair in June, 2002, and I moved it to its current location in November of that year. Tom Musta been mid-March. Of 2004. Spring chicken. Laila: October 2001. Ron: My website goes back to 1995, but the blog started in December 2003. Scott: In August 2004, just a few months after I first discovered lit blogs on the net. Max: I started my blog on blogspot on March 24th, 2003. I rechristened it "A Blog about Books" on May 12th of that same year, and I moved it to its current location on August 9th, 2003. God willing, I hope to one day move the blog to its very own domain. EWN: How difficult was it for you to learn how to maneuver within your blog and get things looking the way you wanted them to? Sarah: I'm not sure what you mean by this--are you speaking in terms of content or style, as in to get my blog to have a particular "look" about it? If it's the latter, then I'll use my experience in revamping the site. I found that Blogger did not always meet my needs in terms of reliability and appearance, and often got complaints from readers who couldn't read the entire site at once--it always seemed to end in the middle of a post, which was extremely annoying. For the new site I wanted a look that was clean, readable, and uncluttered, and used one of Typepad's templates and tinkered with it somewhat. I took my time in making the site appear the way I wanted it so that if pitfalls came along (and there were plenty) then I had enough time to solve them before launch day. Luckily, I did and the switch went off without any problems. CAAF: I guest-blogged for Maud a few times and learned the basics of HTML for that. For a long time, I wanted to start my own site but didn't as it was so much easier to hang out at Maud's site - everything was up & furnished & super-fine. I was like the bad friend who won't decorate her own place but always wants to come over to yours because you've got cable and a comfy couch. I've been lucky, though, as my husband's a web designer and programmer and set things up at Tingle Alley. After that, I just had to spend an hour or two figuring out the rest. Mark: Quite easy, but I use Typepad, which is Blogging Software for Stupid People, so it was perfectly matched to my skill level. Dan: Not very difficult. Surprisingly easy. Maud: I've been conversant in basic HTML since the mid-90's and didn't have any trouble with the blogging software. As for the look of the site, well, let's just say I came up with the ideas and my one-man, in-house design team implemented them. I'm clamoring for a redesign but have to wait in line behind the paying clients. Tom I don't bother much with interface, as visitors to RP can attest. (Although if anyone out there wants to design a nifty Rake's Progress Logo for nearly free, let's talk.) I think it took about 3-4 hours to get the TypePad site at its current, merely acceptable level. Laila: Initially, I used Blogger, and didn't have too much trouble setting things up, though I did ask Adnan of Adnan.org to do the design. Then I switched to Movable Type in 2002 and havent looked back. I like its flexibility and the features it comes with, but again I left the design to a pro: Lorissa Shepstone. Ron: It wasn't the least bit difficult. Scott: It was not very difficult. I was already familiar with the concept of a blog, and you have to be a pretty dull knife to not be able to figure out Typepad's interface. Max: The design part of it has been half the fun for me. When I started out I didn't know a single thing about HTML or web design. I use Blogger, which made things pretty easy at the beginning. Each time I wanted to add a new feature or change the look, I had to teach myself how to do it, and now I'm quite conversant in HTML and CSS. I often tell people that blogging is a great way to teach yourself web design. Still, I'm always wishing my blog looked as good as other folks' blogs, and to this end I may one day stop using Blogger and start using something more design-friendly. Or if I'm really clever, I'll convince someone with the know how to make my blog look pretty. EWN: What is the significance of your site's name? Sarah: About two years before I started blogging in earnest, I had set up the blog for a more personal, confessional site. I picked the name because I'd just read Chuck Barris's book CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND and the title stuck, I suppose. CAAF: Tingle Alley was our old address in downtown Asheville. It's a few blocks from the Thomas Wolfe House, and just down the hill from Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe. It's a tucked-away little alley that not many people know about, even in Asheville. I agreed to take the apartment before we even looked inside, just because I liked the address Tingle Alley so much. But it's beautiful part of downtown too: Dilapidated old brick buildings, muted paint colors (sort of how I imagine Amsterdam looks, though I've never been there); it always made me feel like I was living in an oil painting. We had to move last year. A drum circle took up semi-permanent residence at the park bench on the corner, and the lead drummer couldn't keep a beat. A drum circle's bad enough, but living next to an incompetent drum circle is hellish. But I'm glad we could keep the address as a domain. The other night I drove by Tingle Alley and a scraggly guy in a poncho was standing on the corner, below our old fire escape, playing trumpet. Mark: Ahh, funny you should ask. When I mention the site's name, I got a lot Of "Oooo, what a cool name" but it's actually a tongue-in-cheek name, self-deprecating. An "elegant variation" is a writerly faux pas (the "elegant" is ironic); Martin Amis writes about it quite frequently. Here's the actual definition, which can be found on my site: The Elegant Variation is "Fowler's (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer's overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn't permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous." Dan: It's an adaptation of John Dewey's notion of "art as experience." Maud: I guess you could say it reveals my fear of commitment and lack of imagination. I couldn't settle on anything else, so I went with my name. Tom It's named after a series of engravings published by William Hogarth in 1735. The series depicts the downfall of one Tom Rakewell, described somewhere as a "victim of himself." Basically, calling the blog Rake's Progress was supposed to be a sly, self-deprecating reference to me frittering my life away and not writing--Plate VII is described somewhere thus: "Now in debtor's prison, Tom's last hope is to write a play. A rejection letter beside him reads, 'I have read your play and find it will not do.'" In the final Plate: 'The female visitors to the madhouse play the part of audience for the Rake's closing act of complete alienation.' It's black humor on my part, based on various secret fears. Laila: It's a reflection of my heritage. I also like the two vowels, how they ride together before the 'i'. Ron: I was hoping Beatrice Foods would want the domain name and shell out some money for it. Obviously, that hasn't happened. Scott: I had read somewhere (I think it was Chekhov's Mistress) the idea that reading is this big conversation that we all take part in. The metaphor stuck with me and when I was registering with Typepad it was the first thing that came to mind. I also liked that the name "Conversational Reading" implies that (hopefully) my blog will give readers a little something to talk about. Max: It's partly a play on my name: Maximilian. But I had another motivation as well, which I have never totally articulated. I think I wanted The Millions to represent the uncountable things that are out there, be they books, people, or other nuggets of knowledge. EWN: Are you able to track traffic? If so, what's the average amount of hits per day your site receives? Sarah: I don't really trust my site stats but I seem to be averaging between 1500-2000 hits per day. CAAF: Ugh, I try not to think about it. Some days it feels like my mom's the only person reading. Mark: Yes, I can track traffic, and it's a horrible obsession that I've tried to wean myself from. So your asking me just feeds the compulsion, but I tend to average about 2,000-3,000 hits a day; it can be more if I've been picked up by a high-traffic site like Slate or Salon. Dan: According to my "counter," between 800-1000 per day. Maud: I'm not sure whether we're talking about hits or visitors. I understand from my more statistics-savvy friends that "hits" counts are nearly always inaccurate because they fail to account for multiple hits from one user. Here's what I know: on an average weekday, I have between 4500 and 5000 "requests for pages," or hits, from 1800+ "hosts." I don't know how many "unique visitors" I have. I do know that the stats can double -- or more - when one of my interviews or comments is picked up by a news or publishing site or the site is mentioned in an article that inspires lots of online commentary. A New Yorker article about an agent courting bloggers (including me, although I haven't finished my novel and am not looking for or settling on an agent until I do), for instance, made the rounds and generated so much traffic and commentary that I couldn't keep up. A recent blurb about my site in the New York Times Book Review had a significant short-term effect on traffic. Tom I can track views, so all this could be one guy hitting "Refresh" all day. It varies; RP is small potatoes, so I often live or die on who links to me, and how prominently. If I get a couple hundred, it's a very good day. Some days I get markedly less. (When Maud links, I must say, the traffic jumps significantly.) Laila: I get anywhere between 3,000 and 4,500 hits per day. My busiest day was March 19 of last year, with 20,000 hits. Since Moorishgirl went live in 2001, it's received well over 1 million unique visits. Ron: I am able to track traffic, and I do, but I regard that information as proprietary. Sorry. Scott: Back in August I probably got a paltry 50-100 per day. The sad thing was that a large fraction of those were me checking out the look of the site. Dan Green gave me my first high-profile link, and I saw things shoot up to the 200s for a while. I've been as high as 500 per day when I get linked to by certain blogs, but I would say my current average is in the 200-300 range. I feel as though I shouldn't pay too much attention to this, but it's pretty difficult to ignore. Max: I wish I couldn't keep track of my hits because it is indeed an unhealthy obsession of mine. I kicked cigarettes, but I still check my stats dozens of times a day. I'm in the 200 to 400 range generally. I have gotten the occasional high profile link, but most of my traffic seems to come from regulars and search engine traffic. EWN: How much time do you spend on average per day on your site? Sarah: Heh. Way too much time. That's all I will say. CAAF: It's erratic. Probably one to three. I haven't been going long, but I can already easily see how it could become addictive and encompassing. A lot of people laughed at the New York Times article last month about blogging as "addiction", but it gave me a guilty start. There was that guy whose wife caught him in the bathroom on their vacation, blogging on his laptop. Very pathetic, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. I remember what particularly struck me is that the wife implied that he only had 2 or 3 readers ... Mark: Probably too much, but it's hard to track. The actual posting time doesn't take long at all - maybe 30-45 minutes when I run 12-15 items. But the time is spent culling through items, looking for things, determining what goes in and what doesn't. Let's call it two hours a day and have done with. Dan: 2-3 hours. Maud: La dee dah dee dah. (I'm in denial about that.) Tom 2-3 hours. Sometimes more. Laila: I try to set a time limit of about two hours for linking, posting, and reading other blogs, though there are days it takes four hours or even more. Ron: An hour or so, reading and writing included, or about the same time I take working out my fantasy baseball lineup. Unlike the game, though, I usually take weekends off for the blog. Scott: I take 1-2 hours per day to write my posts. You can add on to that another hour of seeing what's in the news and what everyone else is talking about. Max: Before the blog I could never get myself into a writing schedule, but once I got really into it I was able to work on the blog for at least two hours each morning before moving on to other things. Now, with school, I'm happy if I can get an hour in every other day. Like any good blogger, the guilt I feel about this is tremendous. EWN: Who is your intended audience, and who do you believe your actual audience has been so far? Sarah: I began the blog to fill what I thought was an unfilled niche. There were literary and culture blogs that I tuned into regularly (Bookslut, Maud, Old Hag, TMFTML, The Literary Saloon, to name but a few) but none concentrated on crime fiction. Similarly, various outlets kept track of mystery-related news, but no one blogged. Being a fan of the genre, having spent some time as a bookseller and generally "in the know," I thought I could add a worthwhile perspective that combined the litblog sensibility with the angle of focusing primarily on crime fiction. So I hoped I could attract an audience that encompassed both facets of my approach. So far, it's proved to be the case, although I hadn't expected as many crime fiction types to post to or read the blog actively. CAAF: My intended audience: Other bibliophiles. I like to read pretty widely, and in so much as I have a plan, I hope to attract readers who like reading all sorts of different things themselves. You know when you're standing in line at the library? And you notice people who are juggling a too-big stack, the type of stack you know is destined to accrue some serious-ass fines because the person just got carried away. And you check and there are some weird good titles there. Or you see someone at a restaurant, at a table alone, using the salt-and-pepper shaker to pin down their book while they eat. Those are the type of people I warm to, and that's who I keep Tingle Alley up for. One of the happy consequences so far is that a lot of writers seem to be reading, as well as some just plain hyper-read people. And I like the discussion and the insight these people are bringing to the site. Mark: My intended and actual audience is an audience of serious readers. Not self-important, mind you - although I do sometimes tilt that way - but folks who are passionate and informed about literature. And I do make a distinction, even as I recognize it to be a problematic one. My tastes are literary, I'm less drawn to genre stuff. I don't look down on it, it just doesn't excite me. And although there's a lot of new fiction out there that's quote-literary-unquote, I don't care for flash and cleverness. I'm drawn to deeper, quieter books. "Chewy" is the adjective I use most often. I like a nice, chewy read, and I assume my readers do, too. Dan: My intended audience was anyone seriously interested in literature, whether general readers who wanted more than they were getting from "mainstream" sources, or academics who were disillusioned with the academy's current non-interest in literature. Based on comments, links, etc., I'm happy to say that this is the audience I appear to have reached. Maud: I hate to sound like a slacker, but I honestly don't have a game plan. I write about books and authors and ideas and other things that interest, amuse, or annoy me, from the serious to the whimsical, and I don't have an ideal reader in mind. My daily site statistics reveal the servers sending traffic my way. Most days they'll include the New York Times, Washington Post, Conde Nast, Penguin, Random House, and other publishing heavy-hitters. And I correspond with established journalists and writers -- and with other book bloggers, including many on this list. But some of my favorite correspondents are just regular people -- often aspiring writers, always voracious readers -- offering smart, funny observations. It's cool (if bewildering) that my site traffic keeps rising, but an unfortunate side effect is that the volume of mail I receive means I'm less likely to strike up a meaningful correspondence with someone new. Tom You know, at the outset I figured the "audience" would be other lit bloggers, and I think that's pretty much the case. Again, my "audience" is so small, I kinda see it as a circle of friends (if I may be so bold). It's apparent that some authors are reading, or are at least aware of what's going on at RP and elsewhere. Laila: I started the site for myself, and since I don't make a penny from it, I don't have to please anyone or worry about what people will think. So you could say that my audience is me, but I do think that the site is for anyone who is interested in books, writing, Morocco, the Middle-East and South Asia, and all the ways in which they intersect. So far, my audience has been book lovers and individuals who are interested in the Arab world, though I'm noticing the two aren't necessarily the same people. Ron: The entire world, and a small portion of it. Well, actually, I'm just hoping to interest people who are like to read good writing as much as I do. Scott: Someone e-mailed me the other day about lit blogs filling a need for literary conversation (which wasn't being met in that person's face-to-face encounters), and I think that sums up my intended audience pretty well. Basically people who enjoy thinking about what they read and who want to know what other like-minded folks have to say. Max: My blog sprang out of my working at a book store. And anyone who has worked at a general interest book store knows that you end up knowing a lot about books that you wouldn't necessarily be interested in on your own. I also realized that I was pretty good at being an informative book clerk, and I thought it might be fun to see if this translated to the internet. So, I think my audience differs from that of a lot of book bloggers. I tend to hear a lot more from people with less literary tastes (which isn't to say that they don't love to read). I also spend a lot more time on non-fiction than most book bloggers. I think this is at least partly because I'm not particularly engaged with the fiction-writing word. I simply love books, all of them. EWN: What do you hope to accomplish with your efforts? Sarah: My main goal is and always has been to demonstrate what a wonderful genre crime fiction truly is, and that it should be taken seriously from a literary and publishing standpoint. I also champion midlist and lesser-known writers and hope any mention I make will increase their awareness. A side benefit that's recently come to light is a developing network of writers who have met through my blog and subsequently became friends and sounding boards for each other. If I can facilitate that kind of community, then I must be doing something right... CAAF: I posted a little about this when I launched the site, so please forgive the repetition of ideas. I stumpled onto blogs a year or so ago. The first one was Bookslut. From there I got to TMFTML, and from there to Maudie and About Last Night. I still remember those first click-throughs and not even being sure what the hell I was looking at - I had never heard of blogs. And from those starts, I got to all the other good ones - the ones on this panel, for sure, but also a lot of other ones that now I can't drink my morning coffee without checking. It was a huge & happy discovery. I can't emphasize that enough. I've got great friends with whom I enjoy talking about books, but there's an intensity to the conversation going on in the blogs that's difficult to match. Really, there's a point with book talk where even your most stalwart in-person friends might start to glaze over ("And then AS Byatt said ... And Yardley was all ..." etc.), and the blogosphere's just warming up. And after a while I wanted to get in on the conversation. At the most basic level, that's what I hoped to accomplish: Just jumping in and being a part of this big discussion about books. It seems to me particularly important that - as coverage in magazines and newspapers is slashed - there are these forums for expansive, untimely and completely nonprofitable discussions about books. I think the blogs do a good job of championing and celebrating a lot of authors who might not be talked about otherwise. And I think it's nice that a conversation has emerged that's smart and ranging, but not necessarily academic. Mark: Exactly what I've accomplished already - to make the acquaintance of other people who care about books, and to widen the circle of literary conversations. If, along the way, I can push small presses and less-known authors, so much the better - provided, of course, that their work moves me in some way. Dan: To bridge a gap between general-interest book discussion and what used to be serious literary criticism-the latter having moved almost entirely to the academy. Maud: To the extent that I have a consistent, serious goal, it's to share my thoughts about books and writing and culture with readers and other bloggers, and to expect that they, in turn, will have insights to share with me. Tom Most of my goals are selfish. To stave off boredom. To get myself writing again after a long, dry spell. To amuse. To find people to talk to about literature. To goad myself into actually writing a book (or, you know, finishing a short story). I didn't get into this to be a journalist or critic, so I don't see myself as trying to create a new paradigm for literary criticism, changing the way books are talked about, etc. etc. I think some of the others on the panel here are well on their way to doing that, and they're better equipped for it. Laila: I like to share material of interest to me with other readers. I enjoy being in conversation with my readers and with other bloggers. And I also try to promote the work of deserving writers who don't get much exposure in the mainstream media. Ron: Well, you know, people pretty much give me books FREE to read at my leisure, and other people PAY me to read books, so my basic goals have already been met. Everything else is a matter of scale. Scott: When I started this, I wanted to have something that would force me to write down my thoughts about literature on a daily basis and keep current in lit-related news. Of course I also had hopes that people would read my blog and like what they saw. Now that I'm getting a little more exposure, I would say that I'm still in it to get myself writing, but also to participate in the general conversation--both to share what I have to say and to learn from the other bloggers. Max: I think first and foremost I was interested in having my thoughts "out there" in the world, and I was excited about how easy it was to do this with a blog. I also really wanted to help people find the books they were looking for and to let them know about books that I think are really good. To this end, the Ask a Book Question feature on my blog has been a really fun for me. EWN: Why you? Sarah: Why not? I love blogging and I love that I can, potentially, make a small difference. CAAF: Because it makes my agoraphobia look functional. Mark: It's actually a condition of my probation. Dan: It seemed the thing to do. Maud: That's what my mother asked when I emerged from the womb. I still don't have an answer. Seriously, I'm much more comfortable plugging the other sites mentioned here than plugging my own. I'm truly mystified by its popularity, which I attribute largely to dumb luck and timing. Tom Why not? Laila: Because there are some books beside Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code that are worth checking out, because there's more to the Middle East than what you see on Faux News, because I don't really care for discussions of Dave Eggers or Laura Miller. Ron: I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. Scott: I've got thoughts on literature and if I don't put them in the blog, people who don't really give a damn will be forced to listen to me in the lunchroom. Max: I don't know. It just sort of happened. And then later on, I began to realize, "hey, this is a lot of fun." EWN: What do you consider an Emerging Writer to be? This stems from a discussion I had with Mark around Book Expo when it really hit him just how many books would be published this year. Mark: With all due respect to the name of your fine website, I'm not sure how useful a distinction I find "Emerging" writer to be. I'm stuck with an image of this mole-like creature tentatively popping its head out from a subterranean lair and looking around to see if it's safe to step out. What makes an "Emerging" writer something different than merely a "new" writer or a "first novelist"? Perhaps "emerging" might be taken to be a writer around whom wisps of interest are coalescing but that does seem to make it rather a passive thing, doesn't it, left up to the tastemaking prowess of others? I think I'd tilt more toward "the championing of new and unheralded voices" or some such other fairly pat cliche like that. Of course, it doesn't make for so nearly spiffy a website name. CAAF: That's tough as it's not a category that's natural to my mind. I tend to divide the world up more in terms of Writers Who Deserve More Attention (and I include here people who may have published four or five novels, so hence are not technically "emerging," but who are far from rolling in the wild riches I would wish for them and their family) and Writers Who Have Plenty. J.K. Rowling is a good example of the latter; I like the Harry Potter books just fine but I rarely blog about them as I feel as she's got more than enough attention, riches and minions without my help, thanks. Dan: I would not say that an "emerging writer" is necessarily either a younger writer or a newly-published one. When, for example, did William Faulkner emerge? In the late 1940s, when he himself was nearing 50? You could say that both Melville and Dickinson "emerged" only after their own deaths. In our time, Richard Yates is a writer who has really emerged only posthumously. There are living writers--David Markson, Curtis White, Walter Abish--who arguably are still emerging even after publishing numerous books. In my opinion, most serious writers in the United States spend most of their careers "emerging." If by "emerging writer" you mean moving into a "career" that proves successful in a financial sense, very few writers ever emerge. Maud: "Emerging writer" strikes me as an inherently manipulable term. A writer like Yiyun-Li, who's published in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and The Gettysburg Review, might be considered an emerging writer in some contexts. In others, she'd be thought to have arrived. Tom: Bob Dylan once sang that he who is not busy emerging is busy drowning in the winedark seas of disposable culture. Or something like that. Seriously, the emerging writer to me is the writer who falls between the unpublished wannabe--me, for example--and the writer who gets her own displays at Barnes and Noble. Pretty much anyone who has a huge built-in fan base, to the point that "long-awaited" or "highly-anticipated" can be deployed in their service--Preorder the highly-anticipated Tome by Tom Wolfe today!--isn't an Emerging Writer. Laila: I think traditionally an "emerging writer" would have been defined as someone with a modest publication record, maybe a few short stories or a first book out. But I've seen the term applied very widely, to writers who've been around for about a decade as well as to the new kids on the block, so I'm not sure how useful of a term it is. Certainly your point about the sheer number of new authors who get published every year, and the fact that many people struggle to get their sophomore efforts out, would seem to place the vast majority of working writers in that group. Ron: My feeling is that you're an emerging writer from the time between the publication of your first book and your second book, or four years from the publication of your first book, whichever comes first. Unless, that is, your first book hits the top ten of the New York Times bestseller list, in which case you're a "breakout author" as opposed to an "emerging writer." Sarah: I think an emerging writer is someone who writes in a way that can potentially strike a chord with few or many, whose work inspires passionate response and discussion, but who may not get the kind of review coverage in the major papers that he or she deserves. Granted, there really aren't as many of these people as many (certainly writers themselves) would believe, but when there's a unique voice out there, one has to do everything possible to latch on to it and make it heard. Scott: I'd say it's a writer, regardless of age, who has at least one book out (either a novel or short story collection) and is beginning to generate some buzz for her work. The writer has probably generated some expectations for her second book, but still isn't too well-known. Max: I think being an Emerging Writer means that there is a "grass roots" quality to the path he or she will take to success. There will be no gimmick, no celebrity tie-in, the Emerging Writer will produce quality work and word will get around. EWN: Who is the one author that you enjoy to the point that you're probably plugging him or her nearly once a week on your site? Sarah: It does change from time to time, but chances are that Ken Bruen is the name that will pop up on my blog the most. There aren't that many original crime writers around, but he's certainly one of them and I push his work to non-believers like crack to would-be junkies. Ron: I don't think I have any one author like that. I tend to plug people based on who's got a new book out, so I could be enthusing over Charles McCarry one week and Jennifer Weiner another. Mark: I think everyone knows by now that that's John Banville, author of The Book of Evidence, The Untouchable, Eclipse and, most recently, Shroud. (To name but a few.) Dan: No one yet. I try not to think of my posts as "plugs." Maud: I can't single out one contemporary writer, but my "screaming thigh sweats" for Graham Greene's work are well-documented (http://maudnewton.com/blog/index.php?p=4167). CAAF: Oh, I talk about David Foster Wallace and James Wood to an embarrassing degree. Um, yes, big intellectual crushes. Dawn Powell, Barbara Pym, Nabokov and the Brontes get some steady love, too, though I always mean to do more. I feel a sense of responsibility, particularly to the former two, to keep their names in play, even if its just an allusion now and again. Dawn Powell is one of the greatest (and sharpest) American writers of the last century; and while she's recently come back into print, I feel her work is still undervalued in the canon. For example, she belongs on any short list of great American satirists, but you'll rarely see her there. Those slots tend to be occupied by male writers, and room should be made for Powell. And I'm glad to do whatever I can to keep her name circulating in people's minds. After that, I try to press other enthusiasms on readers as I discover (or rediscover) them for myself: Jincy Willett, Ron Rash, the documentary 'Stone Reader', Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Leonora Carrington, etc. Laila: I don't really fixate on a single author, but I do admit that I've mentioned Marjane Satrapi and Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie quite a bit lately. Scott: That probably has a high correlation to whoever I'm reading and am excited about. Right now that's David Foster Wallace, but earlier it was Don DeLillo. Once I finish Infinite Jest (and I will...) I'll probably find someone else to be hot on for a while. Tom: Nabokov, followed by Murakami. The former is so complex as a writer, and so deeply strange as a person, that the material seems to be endless. I'm fascinated by him, probably to the detriment of RP visitors. The latter is just a great writer, a personal hero of mine. Kind of bland in comparison to Nab, but we have the new Murakami novel forthcoming, so I don't see that dead horse going unbeaten in the near future. Donald Barthelme I cite quite a bit, in hope of capturing the funny and astute jewel-perfect observation he is/was so good at. Oh, and David Foster Wallace, of course, who's a minor version of Nabokov (smart, weird) to me. There are more, I'm sure (Richard Hugo, Ted Roethke, and so on.) Max: I could mention many, but I always enjoy plugging the best book I have ever read: The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis. EWN: There's a bit of an incestuous nature between the blogs - what with the links and comments and references back and forth on a daily basis. What idea can you admit to having copped from another site? Sarah: To be honest, I don't know--I'm sure I have, since the 'sphere is rather fluid and we all read each other, but I don't know if I've ever really copped another idea. Maybe when Mark Sarvas interviewed Andrew Sean Greer, I thought that was incredibly cool and wanted to do something like that (and did so, interviewing Michael Connelly in June) but that was more to prove to myself that I could interview people, a skill I'm trying to perfect, instead of taking an idea from another person's blog. Ron: I've never copped an IDEA from another blog. I've mentioned some of the same ARTICLES that other blogs have mentioned, but that's hardly the same thing. And I don't see that as "incestuous" at all, unless the mainstream media is "incestuous" for covering the same stories and having opinions on how the other guy does it. Mark: Well, gee, let's see: Maud has inspired me to do interviews; Laila has inspired me to do more reviews. I imagine there's much more - I never claimed to be particularly original ...Oh, I'll be introducing a new feature soon that's at least superficially a rip-off of Ron's Five Questions feature. (Sorry, Ron! But I won't be calling it that!) Dan: I started out not linking to daily news or interesting items elsewhere. I thought Maud and Mark did this especially well already. I've actually gone to doing this more often. Maud: I cop ideas all the time, and when I do I attribute them to their sources. As for the so-called "incestuous" linking, I addressed the subject recently on my site, in response to David Orr's write-up about my site in the New York Times Book Review, and I'll quote from that post here (http://maudnewton.com/blog/index.php?p=4177): "I often link to fellow bloggers, and this isn't the first time someone has suggested that the bloggy cross-linking is tedious, clubby, and excessive. And I intuitively understand that people with leanings toward traditional print journalism (of the I'll-print-my-argument-then-you-print-yours variety) would see a blog's references to other bloggers as gratuitous. I'll even concede that if I read a group of weblogs and didn't choose to establish my own forum for commenting I might be put off by the insularity of the references and jokes. Still, leaving aside all the manifesto-like rhetoric for once, I link to the vast number of literary (and other) weblogs I admire (in addition to the ones included in Orr's article) for several reasons. Sometimes I link as part of source attribution. (I was raised southern, after all. I believe it's only polite to thank somebody if you take something from him or her.) Sometimes I pick up a quote from another weblog and place it in a list of publishing news, treating that blogger's perspective as the equivalent of a critic's argument in a newspaper or magazine article. And this, I suspect, is what upsets some print media types. After all, who are the bloggers to pontificate about literary and cultural matters? They lack credentials. Some went to sub-par southern schools. Some didn't even graduate from college. Here's the thing: I tend to evaluate the reliability and intelligence of sources for myself. Having determined that a site is trustworthy, entertaining, or interesting - and preferably all three - I will refer to it accordingly, regardless of whether I take my quote from an article in The New York Times, or a post on a blog. And so of course I was disappointed to see so many of my favorite sources for literary news and commentary omitted from the article (even as some other excellent ones were included). It's a lesser version of the reaction I'd have if someone purported to list the 50 best novelists of the 20th Century and left Graham Greene out." CAAF: Too many to admit in public. I owe all my fellow bloggers a drink, and Maud and Mark a pitcher. Laila: I can't recall taking anybody's ideas--at least not consciously. Obviously, when someone raises the bar, it's stimulating, and you want to try and emulate her (yes, I'm talking about you, Maud.) Tom: Oh, the whole repertoire, probably. The real innovative stuff--the really, really painfully unfunny stuff, like the Two Franzens--is mine, but the rest is copped from here and there. Scott: I'm not sure. I actually think the thing where Dan has himself and a guest blogger review the same book is pretty cool, but I never did that myself because I was afraid of being accused of ripping Dan. I guess the one thing I've copied from virtually all my favorite lit bloggers is a sometimes snarky tone, which is both fun to write and fun to read. Max: I think I learned from other bloggers how important it is to participate in the blogging community. EWN: What innovative idea have you employed, or do you plan on using, at your site? i.e. - author keys, guest bloggers, guest reviewers, dueling viewpoints, Ken Jennings updates :) etc. Sarah: Throughout the month of August, I decided to employ a whole host of special guest bloggers to spice things up--it's a fairly dead month for publishing, and I both needed a break (I was preparing to move to Toronto), wanted to keep my traffic up, and thought it would be a great way to give some of my writer friends necessary exposure. I never had so much fun being a guest at my own blog as Robert Ferrigno talked about his tour and how he created colorful characters, Donna Moore regaling us with tales of the number 62 bus and Scottish crime fiction, Emily Maguire's Oz Lit primer, Jason Starr's Amazon rants, Charlie Williams talked about being a brand new author, and when Alina Adams stirred up some controversy that led to me locking my first-ever thread. All incredibly individual voices that got their chance to speak out. Would I do it again? Maybe not in such a concentrated format, but I really do love having guest bloggers around, and it's a way for a writer to try it out for a day or two without committing to the format fully. Ron: None of those are really innovative anymore, are they? If they ever were; after all, every single one of those gimmicks was used in print media long before blogging started. For the most part, I think the only thing "innovative" about bookblogging is the technology that made a broader array of content feasible--the content itself can range from good to bad, but even the best material could have been done in print if only somebody had been willing to give that author a chance beforehand. Mark: I've been aggressive to try to bring in a variety of a guest reviewers. The highbrow reason is to expand the voice and areas of concern of TEV but the truth is I'm lazy, swamped and a slow reader. I've also pushed to cover local events with photos and such, wherever possible. I love having guest bloggers too, but they're harder to find than you'd think. In fact, Dan, what are you doing in December? Dan: I'm sort of planning to start a new blog--a supplement to TRE that would house my especially long posts. I have also initiated a series of "dueling reviews" with other bloggers. Maud: I've had guest bloggers -- including my friend and standing Friday blogger Stephany Aulenback -- interviewed writers, editors and critics, offered opposing viewpoints and book reviews, and more. CAAF: Now that Tingle Alley has been live for a few months I have lots of ideas on how I'd like to adapt and improve it. I'd like to start doing more parodies, for one thing. They're fun, and they're also interesting to write as you have to take apart someone else's sentence structure to do it. I also have plans to do more interviews and round-robin-type reviews with some of the other bloggers. Laila: I was one of the first to run regular book reviews, because I was getting tired of the old format of just links and commentary. I'm planning on having a few authors guest blog, but I can't really share any details until it's been worked out. I've also covered book readings, and I've done interviews in the past and will be having more in the future. Tom: See above, re: Good and Bad Franz. (Who are very funny to me, but probably leave 99% of readers annoyed and confused.) I've done the dueling viewpoints with Dan Green; I'd like to do that sort of thing again. More honest-to-god book reviews should be appearing in the near future. Also, I have (probably unrealistic) hopes of putting up more original, creative work, preferably not by me, and also sketchy plans for an ongoing blogstyle narrative, at a separate location. Scott: Have I been innovative? I don't think I've come up with any original features yet. I guess I report on my current reading more than other lit blogs I've seen, but that's about it. Max: I'm always trying to come up with clever new "features," but by far the best has been Ask a Book Question. Readers send their book-related questions to me using a form on the website, and then I do my best to answer them with the help of the rest of my readers. It's great fun. EWN: Have you had much feedback from the literary establishment? Authors, publishers, and the like? Sarah: Almost every day I get feedback from authors, editors, agents, people in publishing that essentially say the same thing--they love the blog and think it's great. I really had no idea when I started that so many people are reading it regularly or have some awareness, and to be honest, I'm still surprised that there's far more than about 20 people who pay attention. Lots of lurkers out there... Ron: Yes, and there's a range of opinions about my success or lack thereof. Mark: Yes, lots, and that's been one of the real treats. The highest profile response was probably Sam Tanenhaus' reply to my open letter. But I've exchanged e-mails with a variety of folks I admire, ranging from editors to agents to authors to critics. That's one of the absolute great benefits of doing TEV, a constant reply to the question "Why do you blog?" Just the other day, Michael Gorra, whose criticism I admire enormously (he wrote an excellent introduction to the Penguin re-release of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair), dropped a line because I'd linked to a review of his. That's a whole lot of fun. Dan: Some. More than I thought I would, actually. Both authors and publishers. Usually requests to review or discuss something, but sometimes just to chat. Maud: Yes, increasingly I do hear from authors and publishers. CAAF: Only in the sense that a lot of Tingle Alley's readers seem to be writers themselves or to work in the book industry in some capacity. So not feedback as much as a feeling of having comrades in arms out there. Laila: Sure. It's not why I do it, but it's always nice when you get an email from an author you didn't know was reading your blog. I also get lots of emails from publishers asking to send me review copies or from authors asking me to plug their books. I try to explain that I can't possibly mention everyone, but the emails keep on coming. There's also one guy who's been sending me chapters from his novel, apparently thinking that bloggers have the power to get books published. Tom: A little. A bit of email contact with authors, and the odd (serially published) writer or two in the comments section. A few of the smaller houses have sent--or have offered to send--free books, which is a mindblowing experience to me. They don't know how small is my audience, it seems. No one should inform them, either. Scott: I've had some friendly e-mails and some nice write-ups from other lit blogs. It's always thrilling to find a trackback ping or to discover that someone has said something nice about a post of mine. Max: I love getting emails from publishing types and authors, but then I love getting emails from anyone who reads my blog. The free books, when they come, are nice too. EWN: Not that you are necessarily looking for it, but do you believe having a well-done, highly respected Lit. Blog will lead to job offers in the future within the literary industry? Sarah: If not for my blog, I would never have had freelance assignments from major papers like the Washington Post, nor begun my stint as the Baltimore Sun's mystery columnist. So, I believe the blog opened those doors, and will hopefully continue to open more of them. Ron: "Job offers" is a nebulous term. If you mean, "will anybody get writing assignments from somebody who's read their blog?", that's already happened. If you mean, "Will anybody get an editorial position at a publishing house because somebody read their blog?", I find it unlikely. Though I'm happy to be proven wrong. Mark: Job offers? Starting at a big fat 18,000 a year? I certainly hope not. But it is nice to extend a bit into the reviewing world, as Sarah and Maud and a few others have done. Dan: No. Maud: I couldn't begin to predict where literary weblogs might lead, but I for one am not looking to make a career out of blogging. CAAF: I'd say we're already seeing that happen: Sarah's gig as a mystery critic at the Baltimore Sun is a sign of that. And I see the bylines of Maud, Lizzie Skurnick (Old Hag), Choire Sicha (former editor of Gawker), Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette) in major book reviews. I have a lot of different motives to keep Tingle Alley: It's fun, it's social (in a bizarre cyber way), it feels nice to help out other writers, and satisfying to hook people up with books they might want to read. As much as I have professional hopes for the site, it's to use the site as a way to connect with future readers for my book, once it's published. My diabolical master plan runs something like this: If everyone who reads Tingle Alley regularly buys a copy of the book and - let's just say, conservatively - 75 or so copies each for friends and family, I should have a pretty decent print run of at least 1,000. And remember, that's conservative. Some people (like, you know, my mom) might buy as many as 200 or 300 copies to distribute as gifts for holidays and special occasions. Because nothing says "Happy birthday" or "Congratulations on your new baby" or "Sorry to hear about your loss" or "Thanks for reading my meters" like the gift of new fiction. Laila: I think that having a platform has certainly helped a handful of bloggers have access to people in publishing/media and it may have helped them land gigs. Tom: Jeez, I hope so. I'd love to be the Lit Blog equivalent of the starlet discovered at the soda fountain or the county fair. Plucked from obscurity and charged with writing bloodless copy for the New York Times or whatever. Realistically, not really. There are too many people who can be semi-insightful and funny in the space of a blog entry, so there's not a great chance of standing out on that alone--plus, I'm not interested in doing the "networking" you'd probably have to do to parlay this into a real job. Or the work it takes to have a "highly respected" Lit Blog, for that matter. I'm a guy in a basement in Denver. This is pretty much a lark. Scott: I guess it "can" lead to that (it's happened before), but "will" lead to that? Probably not, in most cases. Max: Eh, I'd rather blog about books than do anything else in the book industry (except maybe write a book). So maybe if someone wanted to pay me to blog, or to write pieces that are similar in tone to what I do on my blog, I would be interested. EWN: There have been some recent articles about bloggers right up to this week's Book Babes column. What do you think the journalistic public is still getting wrong about LitBlogging? Sarah: In the case of the Book Babes, it would have been more helpful if Ellen & Margo had actually listed more actual litblogs instead of ones that sometimes, maybe, talk a little about literature (BoingBoing?) but small gripes aside, I think the MSM (mainstream media) is slow on the uptake in terms of accepting that litblogs are a viable alternative for thoughtful discussion and criticism as well as community. But I expect they will--and then blogs will be over and we'll have to find some other way to reach out to unjustly ignored writers and bring them to people's attention. Ron: Answering that question accurately would require much more time thinking about what the journalistic public has to say about bookblogging than I care to spend, especially since it would cut into my reading time. Mark: Oh pretty much everything. But they're stuck in an outdated model, and they're desperate to preserve their place. The blog revolution spells some rather ugly shit (can I say that here?) vis-a-vis the stranglehold that the major papers have had over literary opinion making. I don't expect those guys to get it any time soon. Bloggers have more style, energy, insight and interesting literary tastes than all but a handful of the folks out there feeding the literary machine. Dan: That it's about gossip and subjective musings. Maud: Too many comparisons to print media. Blogging is an inherently ifferent, more flexible form. CAAF: I'm not so sure this is a case of getting it wrong as much as it is a bias I don't share, namely, an expectation that lit blogs should look and behave like print media, i.e., take an even-handed, disinterested, less personality-infused tact toward presenting publishing news and literary criticism. At least this seems like a subtext to some of the articles I've read. What they're missing, in my eyes, is that this is a very personal medium. And that that is not one of its flaws, it's one of its strengths. Before I read lit blogs, I would wake up in the morning and check the book pages for the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post. I knew how to find book news. So while I appreciate that a lot of my favorite lit blogs deliver news, that's not why I read them. I read them to hear the news filtered through that blog proprietor's personality, because I like that person's voice, their observations, their jokes and commentary, and I take their recommendations on what to read seriously. I dig this whole noisy, opinionated conversation that's going on, that's sometimes rolling across several websites over the course of the day or week. And I would miss it if that switched into a dried-up version of print criticism, if everyone started rattling away like decorous telex machines. The blogs I love don't read like newspapers or magazines. They read like they are written by people who, if they'd been born a century or two ago, would have been excellent (and prolific) letter writers. Laila: Well, I think there's been too much emphasis on the lit blogosphere as a 'cozy' place (as Jennifer Howard famously put it.) I'm also slightly annoyed that a few journalists think that bloggers want their jobs or crave the recognition from the mainstream media. Tom: Um, this baffling assertion that blogging about books is some sort of elitist gesture. Also, there seems to be a sense that the chumminess--or whatever you want to call it--of the litbloggers (also known as "blogfucking," if we want to be crass, and I kinda do) somehow invalidates the medium or the ideas/opinions being expressed on various blogs--a premise that makes for a good "bloggers so crazy" piece in your local newspaper, but is mindbendingly shallow. Scott: I think the mainstream media has had much more to say about political blogs than lit blogs. It seems to be wary of political blogs to the point of fear, and with good reason because those blogs to have the potential to undermine the mainstream media's base. But as for lit blogs? I honestly haven't heard that much. One thing I would say, though, is that the mainstream media is underestimating the quality of writing that is coming out of lit blogs. Max: I think maybe it's a little silly that they have devoted so much time to LitBolgs. There's blogs out there on just about anything. The phenomenon of blogs on the whole is more interesting to me. We just all happen to like books. If we liked fishing, we'd all have blogs about fishing. EWN: Again, I thank you all greatly, both for your time here, and the hours of enjoyment I've received wandering across your websites - they are all well worth the time of anybody reading this. Feel free to add any final comment about blogs, your site, or any of the others participating here! Sarah: Just wanted to say that it's been a great experience, and I can't wait to see the final interview online. Good work, Dan. Mark: Your check's in the mail, right? Keep up the great work with EWN, Dan. Maud: Thanks, Dan. Tom: RP needs more groupies. I haven't received a nude photo one in, like, the whole 8 months I've been doing this. It's damaging to the self-esteem, it is. I mean, if you can't get near David Foster Wallace because of a restraining order, or whatever, you can still stalk--or, hell, pound tequila shots with!--a guy who has read a lot of DFW. Scott: Thanks for the opportunity. This was a lot of fun and thanks for putting this together, Dan. Max: Keep reading everybody!
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