Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2002 17:49:25 +0100
To: Tom Coates
From: Rory Ewins
Subject: Re:WeblogCommunity

Here you go, Tom. Good luck with the paper.

Your name: Rory Ewins
Your site name: Speedysnail
Your site URL: /

1) How did you first hear about weblogs and weblogging?

I'll have to think back to late 1999 to answer that. It was probably
after stumbling across Lance Arthur's glassdog - I was doing stuff with
online fiction at the time, and found his site through some portal or
other. It was my first hint that there was this whole underground
movement of crazed linking and commenting and writing going on. Not long
after that I found kottke.org and started reading it, and then a few
others: Wetlog, Zeldman, MetaFilter, and some site called Barbelith.

2) What made you decide to start your own weblog?

I resisted for about six months. I was reluctant to start anything that
was too much like a personal journal on my already-established site,
because I'd kept a diary for about ten years in my teens and early 20s
and didn't know if I wanted to share that much about myself with the
world. But then some things started happening that I felt were worth
writing about, and the weblog form, with its daily ever-unfolding
nature, seemed the best way to do so. It also gave me the chance to dump
some of the good links I'd been finding somewhere without just putting
them up in a long and boring list.

3) Since you've started weblogging what have you enjoyed most about it?

a) Recording moments that otherwise would have gone unrecorded. Writing
when I might otherwise not have written. Surprising myself, sometimes.

b) Finding a few like-minded souls out there, and carrying on
conversations with them over days, weeks, months. Feels a bit like uni
student days.

c) Messing around with the form, redesigning, stopping and starting,
practicing, doing.

4) In what ways do you think you could say weblogging has enriched your
life?

I have a body of work to show for the past couple of years that I
otherwise might not have had - although whether better or worse than
what I might otherwise have done with the same time, I can't say. I've
met some worthwhile people online, and have known them for long enough
that I'm 75% sure they won't disappear in a puff of deceptive Kaycee
smoke.

5) Do you feel part of a weblogging 'community'?

A little. I've had my moments of feeling that way at MeFi, but it's too
much work to keep up much of a profile there, and after two years I seem
to be tailing off rapidly. My weblog doesn't have a vast readership, but
the select few who do read it feel like a community of sorts. As for the
wider community, I've been doing this long enough that I feel as well
qualified to talk about blogging as anyone else
(cough*warbloggers*cough) - but I've also been doing it for so long that
I think I've talked myself out on the subject. I can no longer kid
myself that anyone else in the blog world will pay any attention to my
pearls of wisdom about blogging, because they've all pearled them wisely
too.

>Have any of your friends started weblogs?

Yes, one of my real-life actual friends started a weblog a few months
after I did, as a result of reading mine. And he's still doing it.

>Have you met new people with similar interests to you

Yes - virtually, of course, and even physically (at Fray Day 4, when I
was in SF for a few weeks).

>or who live near you

Nope. Tom Ewing said it best for me:

"I am sitting on my own in a big room, forty miles from anyone I know,
and what I am thinking is that the web is a big beautiful fucking fraud.
I have met people online who but for geography might be among my best
friends, and the more time I spend doing this the more it hurts that I
might never drink with them, or only once."

http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~tewing/loafer/loaf0006.html

Cheers,

Rory.