Readers and writers blog

Well, I created it, and now I’ve got to keep it from becoming a monster. Our blogroll, that is.

It’s threatening to take a bite out of other things we’d like to do at our website — for example, publishing free works of nonfiction, fiction and poetry. In fact, as I’m writing this, we’re welcoming the latest submission to our poetry section, Spring Rain by Georgia Eggers.

(Update: Since then, we received another poetry submission, this from our young Canadian friend, Ian Spitzig, a work entitled One way to steal beauty from the city.)

Giving a place for Eggers, Spitzig and others in our Works section to publish was our original goal when we went online a year ago as Readers-and-writers.com. But it was slow going in a blogosphere crowded by websites seeking readers. (And we were told that having a hyphenated domain name didn’t help.) So around last Christmas, we decided to convert what had been a publishing website for readers and writers to a combination website-weblog that became Readersandwritersblog.com.

Like other weblogs, we started building a blogroll, again with the intention of promoting writers and serving the interests of readers. But there was something — actually, two things — that I didn’t foresee:

First, I didn’t realize that I would want to remain in touch every day with each of the blogs we were adding to the roll. And second, I therefore wasn’t thinking how much time that would take.

With its latest addition, the most excellent Varieties of Unreligious Experience, our blogroll now lists 42 sites, including two inactive sites we consider still worth reading for their existing entries. Visiting those blogs — including the inactive sites, one of which I still haven’t finished reading — usually takes at least an hour a day, even on weekends.

So I’m thinking about limiting the list to 52 blogs. That seems like a nice number — one for each week of the year. Does that make any sense?

The number, of course, may vary. I can’t imagine not linking to some wonderful blog I’m sure I’ll run across in my future Internet travels. But I also can’t imagine dealing with a much larger blogroll. Yes, some sites have huge blogrolls, but I doubt those links are well-followed by the writers who put them up.

But, you might ask, isn’t it a bit obsessive of me to want to stay in touch every day with all the sites on our blogroll? Maybe. But I’m interested in what these writers are discussing. And I want to share in these discussions — and be inspired by them — more than I have after our initial reviews.

The purpose of our blogroll, after all, isn’t to become an encyclopedia of all the best weblogs on the Internet. It is to be a cross-section of the best weblogs we could find on diverse subjects.

For example, you’re not going to find a much better author blog than Bernita Harris’s An Innocent A-Blog. (By the way, her blogroll has only 56 links. Because we’re sure she keeps up with them.) You won’t find a much better author webring than the nine-writer blog Riding with the Top Down. Or an editor blog like Flogging the Quill. Or a family and humor blog like McQuestionable Musings. Or a medical blog like about a nurse. Or history blog like Axis of Evel Knievel. Or art blogs like Art-spirit or lines and colors. Or knitting with Franklin at The Panopticon, and . . . well, just go down the list at the right.

And even then, our blogroll is getting a little repetitive — for example, Outer Life, God of the Machine and the aforementioned Varieties of Unreligious Experience, all similarly erudite and classy. But how could we not list any of them?

And we’re still looking for a good telemarketer blog, a good native American blog (we may have found at least one of them), a good actuarial blog and who knows what else?

We may be making room for new listings as some sites on our roll go inactive or dead. But 52 looks like a good number to shoot for, more or less.

Because we also want to spend more time looking for nonfiction, fiction and poetry to publish. It’s been a good year in that respect, but we want a lot more of it in the coming year. So, all you frustrated writers, let’s have it.

– Sid Leavitt

NOTE: The illustration for this post is from a Nov. 27, 2004, cartoon by John Cox and Allen Forkum, whose work is seen regularly in Investor’s Business Daily, The Detroit News and other publications as well as websites.