WSS Featured Blogger:Elayne of Pen-Elayne on the Web

• Name: Elayne Riggs
• Blog: Pen-Elayne on the Web
• Tag Line:Elayne Riggs' Journal
• Location: NYC

1. How did you start blogging? Why do you keep at it?

I've always done one-to-many writing. I first started doing it when I was 13 years old, I would make up "Dream Marriage" stories like the ones in the Tiger Beat magazines I read at the time and pass them around in class, the third row would be reading page 1 and the second row would be reading page 2 and I'd be writing page 3, it was my first instant audience and I loved it. :) From there I went on to penpals (at one point I had over 150, but of course those were the days of 6-cent stamps) then amateur press associations(apas) and self-published newsletters, like my INSIDE JOKE which I did throughout the '80s (what a money drain! but again, I loved it), then online via e-mail and Usenet and message boards and now weblogs. It's just a progression of something I've been doing all my life. I decided to take the plunge after reading my "blogfathers" Neil Gaiman and Wil Wheaton and Tom Tomorrow, and figuring I didn't really need to know all that much techie stuff after all.

2. What are your most important issues?

Oh gosh, whatever strikes my fancy at the moment. I like to keep things relatively light because there are enough people doing a much better job than I could at serious life-and-death stuff. But I'll touch on everything from politics to feminism to sushi to New York to cats to comic books.

3. What's the nicest recognition you've ever received from the media and/or the blogosphere?

Oh, I'm probably well under the radar of "the media" (whoever they are), but I love that Barbara O'Brienmentioned me in her book about blogging. And I thought it was really cool when Tom Tomorrow mentioned my blog about a week after my first post - I'd known Dan Perkins' work for about 20 years, we were both active in the '80s zine scene, and I admire the hell out of him so it was almost like coming full circle. And of course I still get a kick out of being blogrolled by folks.

4. Who is your audience? What is unique about your blog?

Oh, I have no bloody idea. I guess folks who have the same political and cultural interests as me. I'm so rarely the target audience for many kinds of entertainment or political propaganda, that it's nice to be among folks who share my values and viewpoints. It makes a nice change from watching mainstream TV or arguing on message boards with young male comic book fans who treat fictional characters with far more reverence than they ever show to real people.

I'd guess what's unique about my blog, as with every other blog, is my individual voice. That's all we can bring to the table, after all, is our individual voices.

5. Most frustrating aspect of blogging?

Those times when I haven't caught up on my blogroll. I have almost 400 blogs I try to check out regularly and it's nigh impossible to hit them all and, you know, have a full-time job and a life. Sometimes you have to step back, skim what you'd normally read, and go do something else for awhile (which to me usually means catching up on offline reading like comics and magazines)

6. What‚s the one point you‚d like a reader to take away from your blog- the one thing for them to really "get"?

I guess that it's okay to be oneself, that if you don't hide behind a fake identity everything will still be fine. I pretty much write like I talk, I'venever been pseudonymous or dishonest, and I hope I still manage to make things interesting.

- Elayne