Introduction

So, I've decided to start a blog. It's quite a long time coming, I probably should have started one when I started this project for the first time. I'm a final year English Lit. student doing her dissertation on blogging. Now finally when everyone asks me what I'm doing my dissertation on and I say blogging, and the inevitable question that follows is 'oh, so you write a blog?', I can say 'yes'.

At the moment I have a lot of unanswered questions, and I guess I'm hoping to use this writing space as a forum to keep a record of those questions and try to find some answers. I feel slightly parasitic writing a blog on blogging, but I hope that writing about what I'm doing will help me to understand blogging, and if any bloggers out there come across my blog...feel free to chip in!

I met the author of Belle de Jour the other day, Brooke Magnanti. She was being interviewed by India Knight as part of the Oxford literary festival. I managed to corner her at the bar beforehand, she looked as if I might spit in her face or something and I assume it's just because she's not used to being recognised. After the initial shock though, she was lovely and told me to email her agent about asking her some questions. The interview itself was extremely interesting and she came across as a very inteligent and articulate woman, capable of handling anything that comes her way including abusive feminists, academics and adoring fans. She said some useful things that I still need to process, all of the sex work info obviously isn't so relevant, but it was entertaining. I found out that she particularly likes clean shaven men for reasons left to the imagination. Equally her opinions on glamourising prostitution, whether or not areas of the sex industry should be decriminalised, and what advice she had for a dominatrix were fascinating but not suitable to add to my dissertation (unless of course I wanted to try and give my examiner a heart attack). Of all of the things she did mention though, there was a story about the protection of her identity from a fellow blogger, and therefore this strengthens my argument that the community surrounding blogs is the key to their charm.