I like reading blogs. I like how 'internet writing' is sometimes freer and less reverent than a lot of things I see in print.

Most of the following writers are also either working on novels, or have novels published or forthcoming.

I asked them to email me short descriptions of their blogs and writing. Here's what I got back:

TAO LIN:

Tao Lin's writing conveys despair, loneliness, and depression in a bored tone usually. He tries to make some jokes, though not at the expense of an accurate description of the human condition and its myriad effects on people's brains. Tao Lin is the new Jean Rhys but without real problems.

SHANE JONES:

My blog talks about literary type things in the "internet writing scene." I also like to do little projects, like collaborations with other writers and having strangers leave me voice-mails for a story I have yet to write. I also like to post anything on my blog that makes me feel good. Much of my own writing is linked on my blog. I'm interested in writing imaginative, fun, clever, absurd, surreal, type things.

SAM PINK:

hey chris. this sounds nice. however i have the problem of feeling like a recently shit in diaper when i talk about myself. i would much rather have you write the description because you actually like the blog; i just put up with it because of its mother. maybe that's my description: something about a recently shit in diaper and it being a bastard.

CATHERINE LACEY:

Most of my blog posts are excerpts from short stories about women and men that don't get along very well. Sometimes I write about people that are animals and animals that are people. I make videos about people brushing their teeth in public. Sometimes I post things on my blog that don't seem "consistent" with the rest of my blog. I don't post as often as I would like. Offline, I write nonfiction, but I haven't got the balls to post any of it yet.

ZACHARY GERMAN:

Zachary German was born in Somers Point, New Jersey on 17 December 1988. He writes about urban and suburban boredom, teenagers, twentysomethings, beer, gin, pants, Broken Social Scene, tobacco, fruit, television, Coco Rosie, his cat, soft pretzels and relationships. His blog, "every time a police officer gets shot i throw a party" regularly features excerpts from his forthcoming novel, "Eat When You Feel Sad" (Soft Skull, 2009), as well as videos of German sitting in his bedroom. He publishes a bi-weekly limited edition poetry magazine, "the name of this band is the talking heads." German is presently keeping himself busy writing an epic poem about The Rolling Stones. He lives in Williamsburg and is extremely unhealthy.

BEN MYERS:

Blogs should only run in conjunction with something. No one really wants to read about the tawdy details of your banal life - and I do mean you, dear reader - so I think a blog should be used to promote a worthy cause. In my case, it is myself. Visit benmyersmanofletters.blogspot.com to follow links to my latest articles, poems and stories printed in various magazines, newspapers, websites and anthologies, alongside lists, meditations, rants, video clips or how to buy some of my books. It is both banal and tawdry.

I also recently decided to publish an entire book via a blog too. The book is 'I, Axl', a poetic re-imagining of the life of Axl Rose, notoriously tardy Guns N' Roses frontman, bringer of democracy to China and the Howard Hughes of Hollywood-based hard rock. The story is being told entirely in poetic verse and was also partly inspired by the lives of Roman Emperor's Cladius and Nero. It was completed in 2007 and I'll be publishing the 200 or so poems entirely devoted to Mr. Rose over the coming weeks and months. You can read it here, exclusively: www.iaxl.blogspot.com

BLAKE BUTLER:

My writing is a baby that has been shorn of its face skin and rewsewn with strips of vinyl siding and food clumps collected from fat men who can not wipe their mouths. My writing is a digit on the roulette wheel that does not allow bets and when the ball falls into this digit all money becomes sand and the teeth of the dealer turn into tits and the tits fall out on the betting table and the gamblers begin to suckle. My writing is young squeamish munchkins rolling in a blond's cooch. My writing is kind of a black metal mp3 with an error in the coding so that it keeps jumping around in the track and making surrounding dogs throw up coffee. My writing showed its unit in a public cemetery where this 8 month old who died of heavy eyelashes was being buried and my writing's unit got the number of every mourner. My writing is scotch taped to the inside of your mother a little and it makes her glad or sometimes greased.

My blog, though, my blog on the other hand, my blog alternatively, my blog in a manner of speaking, my blog what have you, my blog might I say, my blog is the vulva that quivers for hours after it has been mushed. My blog has the biggest tongue you've ever seen on a lad of Indonesian descent. My blog gave a cold to Lindsay Lohan that made her nipples invert and it also gave the same cold to Jordan Knight and Gaspar Noe and Werrumz Kalorrditmenx. My blog pees sitting down. My blog wants to get its scrote pierced but I said not until he's 12.

I think my writing turned into two books this year but I don't know where they went.

JENN ASHWORTH:

Jenn Ashworth writes about ordinary people doing strange things, like taking revenge on household appliances. Although sometimes the writing is about strange people doing ordinary things, like stalkers hanging out their laundry. There doesn't seem to be a rule to this, not so far. She's been interested in hot air balloons and fat admirers and deep sea fish, but now she thinks she might get interested in call centres. Maybe emergency services operators. She also writes a bit of non-fiction: creative autobiographical pieces that often stretch the truth, and some book reviewing. And then there's an interactive blog novel about some librarians, and a real novel out with Arcadia next Spring.

BRANDON SCOTT GORRELL:

I used to put a lot of poetry on my blog but now not so much. Now I just complain about being depressed or something. I wanted it to attract people in real life but it hasn't really done that. My blog is part of a group of blogs that interact with each other. It exists to promote my writing and the idea of me as an intelligent human. I named my blog MY HAIR WILL DEFEAT YOU to promote the novel I'm writing.

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