Chekhov’s Mistess

Introducing The 9Rules Network

I once wrote a letter to the editor of The Financial Times newspaper on a political issue and they published it. The day it appeared I happened to be going to a big event at the Japan Society and wouldn’t you know, nearly everyone there had a copy of that paper on them. If they saw my short little letter they didn’t know I wrote it, but the idea of my words in their hands was thrilling.

That night I got a phone call from a man who had read my letter and he wanted to tell me what I wrote was great and he was glad someone had said what I did. It was a little weird getting a phone call from a stranger, but I was hooked. I thought how great it would be if I could do that all the time. Shortly afterwards I started a blog. You can fill in the blanks since then by reading through the archives of this site.

The Problem with Blogging

The promise that I once felt from having my own editorial page is slipping already, at least conceptually. The wide world of blogs has grown so rapidly that the probability of having your voice heard is once again nearly as low as getting your letter-to-the-editor published.

Even for a group blog, building a readership is tough. When I started my group site, 400 Windmills, I was quite anxious about everyone posting frequently and thoughtfully, and I felt like I needed to deliver our writers an audience – that even sent me as far as writing a half-baked (and ignored even though it was invited) letter to the editor of the book review section of the San Diego Tribune.

In Step Blog Networks

Blog networks are not new, but they are becoming much more than just a list of recently updated or popular sites. When I first started blogging, I went to these lists to find sites, but what I found had little meaning other than popularity or the coincidence of having been recently updated – in short, it was random.

It took me quite a while to stumble into the community of litblogs with which I’ve now entrenched myself. To be some sort of participant, I keep a running list of posts from other litblogs on this site, but there’s no real infrastructure behind it to make it a serious effort and besides my own input there’s little to determine who gets in there. Still, seeing the outgoing links from this site underscores in my mind the need for a network mechanism.

I have just joined a network called 9rules that chooses sites from submissions and features posts from members on the network’s site. Created by Paul Scrivens, 9rules is a network designed solely to give readers a central place to find established sites and bloggers a community in which to be a part of and build a readership. Their aim is to grow exponentially, support members and create community – a city might be more like it, but that’s still more manageable than a universe.

The network is selective in what blogs they choose, yet inclusive in that it’s not a closed network of chums. That selectivity often incites contention, but I believe that for blogging (other than purely personal, talking-about-your-cat sites) to evolve we ultimately need a filtering or editorial component and a mechanism that brings people together while giving them the chance to retain their own individuality. 9rules is a step in that direction and by all indications they are constantly thinking about how to improve on the concept.

I think I am the first solely literary blog to be part of 9rules, but I hope not the last. Readers here might be familiar with Dave Munger of the site Word Munger. His site Cognitive Daily is also a part of the network.

One Last Thing

If you’ve come here from the 9rules network thank you and I want to warn you I often write pretty long posts, partly because that’s just what I enjoy, and partly because I don’t believe the current idea that ‘short and clever’ over ‘long and thoughtful’ is the distinguishing factor between on-line and print. Concision is the mark of a good writer no matter the medium, but for me, well, I try, but once I start writing…

comments

Welcome to the network, Bud! I think you’ll find it’s a really supportive community. They’re trying to expand the breadth of their coverage, to grow into a network that covers “everything.”

It’ll be interesting to see if they can maintain the quality level as they grow from a group of business/design blogs into a more general network.

    – dave Munger (09/22  at  06:32 AM)

Great to have you, hopefully you’ll be the first in a great line of literary weblogs to come.

*Cling!*

    – Mike (09/22  at  09:58 AM)

>"The Problem with Blogging: The promise that I once felt from having my own editorial page is slipping already, at least conceptually. The wide world of blogs has grown so rapidly that the probability of having your voice heard is once again nearly as low as getting your letter-to-the-editor published.”

I realized early on that Blogging could never take the place of editorially reviewed publications. The reason you mentioned above is one of them. If every one is a ……(fill in the blank, blogger, writer, singer, performer, etc. ) who would be left to be the audience. It’s a case of everyone is a chief, but there are no followers.

The blogs it seems to me that will survive are the ones that aim at sharing some particular interest with like minded people: an elective affinity will more readily guarantee and audience to a blogger than the desire to create a popularly universal site.

This to my mind is what the internet is really good at. It can bring together people with similar interest that in ones place of residence it would be very difficult to find.

I personally appreciate the Cervantes blog you started and I hope to post there often. I have a very strong interest in the novel Don Quijote and I am already in touch with two Cervantes blogs in Castellano.

Thanks for starting the Cervantes blog in English.

    – J. Dyer (09/22  at  05:43 PM)

Jackson (hope that’s the right name). I agree with everything you say. My biggest purpose in being a member of 9rules is not to achieve a wide audience, because the nature of my content dictates otherwise, but to widen the sphere of people that know that me and the other people in the “litblog community” (which is strong, by the way), exist - so, like you say, the net is good at people together with well defined interests and I’m looking for a way to do that. Having said that, there is a difference between sharing and self-expression - blogs fit somewhere between that, which represents a disconnect of sorts.

Hope I’m not being jumbled there.

Anyway, I’m pleased about your comments on 400 Windmills. It’s been largely dormant for some weeks now and although I have some posts to make there, I’ve been trying to think of ideas for next steps with it. It’s been well received and I would love to have it revived. If you have ideas or would like to contribute, send me an email (find it in the sidebar above).

Bud

    – Bud Parr (09/23  at  03:27 PM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: September 21, 2005
• Filed Under:
  Litbloggers & Blog Floggers

• Comments:4
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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