Word Associations

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki.

So I’m sitting at my desk in my home office/children’s playroom writing and thinking and things are going pretty well and I feel like I’ve finally got the main character of the novel I’m working on sorted out, and I’ve actually managed to write quite a lot and I figure: Dammit, I deserve a break. But instead of taking a stroll to the water cooler, like I imagine people who work in real offices do when they need to literally and figuratively stretch their legs, I open up my Favourites to one of the lit blogs I frequent.

Bookninja is a Canadian weblog created by writers for writers and other people interested in books and literary news. There are essays, comics, the occasional rant, chatting forums, a cheeky advice column and what they call “reverse omnibus reviews,” which means that instead of one reviewer covering several books, several writers analyze one text. Most of the rest of the blog is a vast compendium of links to stories about books,writers and publishing.

Bookninja began as a way for friends across the country to stay in touch, share links to articles of common interest, tease one another, etc., but rather quickly it became much more than that. George Murray, a Toronto-based poet who, with Vancouver novelist Peter Darbyshire, started the blog in August 2003, says that they now attract somewhere between 700 and 1,000 users every weekday, maxing out at upwards of 2,000 people on days one of the 'Ninja contributors appears in the media. Considering the fact that many small magazines would kill for that many readers in a month, it’s an enormous accomplishment. And almost all of it is done on a volunteer basis: the two original bloggers, plus newcomer Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, contribute for free; they pay reviewers and essayists. But the really amazing thing is that despite catering to a population for whom solitude is a job requirement, they’ve managed to create a community.

It’s a brilliant idea, really, since puzzling away at a piece of writing — often in the same room where you eat and sleep — can be a lonely and anxious pursuit, and the notion of a ready and available community of similarly isolated individuals is extraordinarily compelling.

And yet, I’m sure I’m not the only writer for whom cruising the lit blogs is a bit like eating a chocolate bar — it seems like an innocuous enough treat sitting among its kind on the convenience store shelf, but even as you take that first bite, you know you’re going to regret it. You can’t possibly stop with just one section, so it’s going to be a spiral into gorging on the whole thing, feeling squishy, undisciplined and, just to amplify the misery, the deep lowdown of a sugar crash.

When I take a break to check out Bookninja or Bookslut or Bookangst 101 (not to mention Buzz, Balls & Hype, Maud Newton and Babies are Fireproof), I know that only an act of enormous willpower will prevent me from spending the rest of the day hopping from author interview to gossip about who got a book deal to the Guardian newspaper’s list of top 10 books for six- to eight-year-olds to a literary bitch session, sinking deeper and deeper into the endless possibilities of internet procrastination. Plus, I’ll spend an inordinate amount of my so-called break wondering how it is that these by-and-large funny, talented and enthusiastic bloggers have the time and mental space to create their blog and maintain careers as freelance writers, poets, novelists, editors, etc., while I can barely squeak out 1,000 words before collapsing into bed at 9 p.m.

And yet, it’s infinitely appealing for a person who loves to read and aims to write to slip through the wardrobe into a parallel world where other people actually care about books; where Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem aren’t just boldface names but animated superheroes forced to face the wrath of supervixen Candace Bushnell (check out the comic strip Patricia Storms of Booklust has created to take the mickey out of Chabon and Lethem’s obsession with comics); where people, lots of people, get exercised, really exercised, when someone complains that women writers are boring and too focused on the domestic. Many of the lit blogs are also unusually well written and even nice to look at (two qualities the blogosphere is not generally known for). They’re like mini-magazines with attitude and quirk to spare — and they actually provide time and space for new writers who may not have a forum elsewhere. (Though with news of blogger book deals plugging up the bandwidth, this is becoming less and less the case.)

There’s no question poking around the lit blogs makes me feel less isolated, as if I’m part of something larger than my 10 x 10 room. And (according to my mother) when you work alone everyday, connecting with others is a necessity. But there’s the rub. Reading other writers’ writing about writing is hardly what most people would consider “connecting with others.” In fact, maybe I’m even more isolated when I carry around this illusory notion that I’m interacting with people simply because we’re reading the same blog. It’s like celebrity stalkers who think being slapped with a restraining order is as fine and true a connection to fabulousness as being invited to stay in the guesthouse for the weekend.

Of course, in blogging lingo, I’m just a lurker — the creepy porno connotations are no doubt intentional — someone who cruises the sites but doesn’t join in the forums or attempt to communicate with other blog readers. Maybe people who write in and comment on items and have a back-and-forth with the blogger experience genuine human connections with one another. I can’t say, but I know my mother would tell me that what I should really do to get my daily interaction quotient is go to the gym or take a walk or go out and talk to my neighbours — the real ones who live in the house next door. And I will, just as soon as I’ve read the joyful musings on discovering a startlingly good writer by the anonymous New York editor/blogger at Bookangst and the discussion on Bookninja about whether or not it’s a kick in the pants when your publisher wants your book to go straight to paperback. Yes, it’s a time-sucking vortex from which I may never escape, but I guess it’s better than that other evil lurking in the writer’s toolkit of Ways To Avoid Writing: Googling yourself. Not that I’ve ever done that.

Andrea Curtis is a Toronto writer and editor.