I read hundreds of blogs - many of them to do with the act of writing such as CopyBlogger, Divine Write and Blake Snyder or blogs by writers discussing their experiences within the industry, such as those by James Moran, Paul Cornell and Neil Gaiman. It was because only a tiny few on my list were from Australia that I was prompted to search for more and compile the list of the Top 50 Australian Blogs on Writing.
Just a few days after releasing the list, Google updated their PageRank numbers for the first time in months. You can wait for ages for Google to update PageRank only for them to do it when it is least inconvenient! This means that some of the numbers used to formula the list are now out of date. Also, since the list was first posted, many of the blog owner have since registered with Technorati in order to increase their rankings. There have also been further recommendations of blogs for inclusion, which is fantastic - keep them coming. There were always going to be omissions from the list of blogs that I have yet to discover and had not been recommended to me. As so much has happened in this first week to already push the list out of date, I will undertake to do an updated list in a fortnight's time, instead of waiting until June as originally planned. This will help get the list into shape before falling into a three-monthly schedule of updates.
Finding the Blogs
My method for finding the blogs included on this list were;
- listing the blogs I was already familiar with, naturally;
- two weeks of requesting suggestions from thousands of people on Twitter, which helped me discover many more and
- spending hours and hours in Google, blog aggregators, writer directories and other sites.
There were always going to be inaccuracies in trying to build something definitive like this - hence my call for corrections and my promise of regular updates to eventually produce a useful, regularly updated and accurate resource. With no central directory, it would always be necessary to rely on continued discovery and corrections to push the list closer to accuracy and completeness.
What is a 'Writing Blog'?
Just a clarification, as there has been some questioning of my choices on the list in the comments to the original post. This is a project to identify and rank (not rate) blogs that are primarily about the act of writing. As such, blogs that are concerned with literary reviews or contained little discussion on topics related to being a writer as opposed to a reader or interested onlooker were not included.This is why blogs such as Matilda or A Pair of Ragged Claws didn't make the cut.
A couple of the blogs that were included in the list may also turn out not to be appropriate for these same reasons. Creating a list of over 80 blogs meant I visited and assessed many, many more. In the limited time to do so (I am allowed to sleep occasionally) some of my assumptions or my initial impressions may have been incorrect and as a result a couple of blogs may be removed in the update.
If a blog has not been included that is clearly a blog about the act of writing, then its omission should not be taken as a slight against the blog owner or a comment on its quality. Omission only occurs if, through all my efforts to find and assess every such blog, it has not yet crossed my path. Please don't accuse me of not knowing Aussie blogs or being poor in my research because I miss yours, but please do submit it to me for consideration.
Ranking, not rating
This was never intended as a subjective list but an entirely objective one. I never wanted to add a personal score that rated the blogs as that is a matter of personal opinion. The best and most objective way to assess a blog is to look at the rankings the blog has achieved in places such as Technorati and Alexa. As these - flawed thought they may be - assess the number of links a blog has received and the amount of traffic that visits, these scores are the best available representation of whether a blog is being read and whether the content is encouraging people to link to it.
This also removes any issues of bias and prevents any slanging matches over my judgment. Blogs will move up and down the list based purely on how active and successful they have been within the blogosphere as a whole.
Why this list is important
Originally, I considered ranking all writing blogs - the idea was not conceived as a localised project. I stepped back from that gargantuan task partly because as there are so many, it would take months to scratch the surface, and partly because it is likely that barely - if any - Australian blogs would even come close to making the list.
I feel there is a lot we can do locally to improve the standing of Australian blogs in the wider blogosphere. We have the talent here, but Australian blogs still largely lag behind other places in the world in influence. I want to change that so that if and when I do produce an international list, Australia is well represented, allowing us to network on a far bigger stage and with a far louder voice.
So if you blog about your writing experiences, make sure I've got you on the list, check that you're registered with Technorati and start networking to build links to your blog. The new list will be released in a fortnight and I'll be checking Technorati, Alexa and PageRank scores a couple of days before, so you have a few days to get your blog off default settings and give it the rank it really deserves!
