An Award - Hooray!

Clearly, being nominated for awards is one of those things that comes in waves...because as well as the Waverton Good Read award longlisting, I have just been given an award by Juxtabook! Here it is.

It’s immensely gratifying when people say, publically, that they enjoy your blog and it set me to wondering what is is about the blogs which I like reading most that keeps me going back each time.

I have to confess that I’m a bit of a blog-tart and will follow trails from one blog to another to another on occasion just to see what I’m missing. In the ‘blogs’ folder on my favourites menu I have nearly fifty entries, though many of these are visited only ocasionally. But, of the top dozen or so (which are visited almost daily) what are the common factors? Four of my top 12 are Macmillan New Writers, including the collective blog. The other eight are also writing related – the blogs of writers published and unpublished, the blogs of people connected to the writing business – booksellers and publishers. In fact, I have to scroll down in to the twenties to find a blog not connected with writing and a few more before I find the next one, though I do have a separate folder for blogs related to the podcasts I listen to and that is far more eclectic. (Clearly, writers are prone to write blogs, people fascinated by other things are more likely to produce a podcast.)

So what – if anything – do all the writerly blogs which I read have in common?
Some are humorous, some are far more serious; some are self-deprecating, some are more upfront about their own artistry; some write exclusively about writing and others write about various aspects of their life; some review other people’s work, others might comment more tangentially on books not their own.
But what they all have in common is that they take their writing very seriously. Some share craft secrets they have learned through their own writing apprencticeship whilst others digest the ‘how to’ writing of others. But writing, and doing it as well as humanly possible, is their concern.

So, because part of the award Juxtabook has given me is a meme, I have to award it along the line to others.

Here are the rules of the meme:
1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded you.
3. Award up to ten other blogs.
4. Add links to those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message for your awardees on their blogs.

I’m sending the award to David Isaak, Aliya Whiteley and Neil Ayres, Tim Stretton, Karen Clarke and Simon and Tim at Open a Bookshop.

Do check them out if you haven't already, they're all great blogs.

More on theme etc as promised in my last post, hereafter.