old & current blog userpics of vodennikov, kuznetsov, and rubinsteinLast week, I used a visit to Moscow to ask some writers and poets what their blogs and websites meant to them – or, in some cases, whether they were thinking of launching one. Has online writing changed their view of the literary production process? What function do their blogs or sites have? This is not the place to reproduce all answers; but here are some teasers.According to Vladimir Sorokin, his highly professional site hasn't been updated since 2007 for a plain reason: he can't trace the "Roman what's-his-name" who devised it. Whether he truly "lost" his designer or not, the much-discussed writer did opt for publishing his latest text – the play Zanos – online in another digital space than his site: the cultural portal openspace.ru. In his own words, he opted for that web forum mainly "so that the text would be read:" rather than as a play conceived to be staged, Zanos was set up "to be read," preferably by a large audience. On a more pragmatic note, Sorokin simply didn't want to "think about where to publish it."Timur Kibirov – no site, no blog – agrees that digital technologies can be fruitful for literary publishing, but they don't make him leap with joy. In blogs, he asserts, "everyone I know comes out sillier than I know them." Lev Rubinstein is more positive: to him, blogs are "the outcome of a new, absolutely horizontal culture" – one which "is only beginning." His own blog he uses mainly for practical purposes.The poet with Russia's most extensive writer's site, Dmitrii Vodennikov, ponders online writing yet more positively. "Blogs gave me so much," he jubilates in near-ecstatic terms, "upon launching one I felt as if I suddenly landed at the centre of the world." His blog made him see "how others live," and realize that "we live in a big village." That "openness," the feeling of "living according to the rules of an open square," he thinks, is "indispensable to a poet."Finally, Sergei Kuznetsov simply wouldn't be the same writer without blogs. When he started his in the early 2000s, it opened up the possibility of both writing "personal, private utterances" – which he desisted in print writing – and presenting business projects. With time, the longing for private expressivity made way for more "publicly" oriented messages; and right now, he uses his blog to publish a mishmash of business-related material, reviews, and brief practical, journalistic, literary or analytical observations.Each of these writers has more to say on the RuLiNet; and there is much left to be said on the terms and images which they use in discussing it. None of that here or now. But perhaps this tiny selection does give a first overview to those of you interested in the topic. If you happen to read this and are working on similar themes: do make yourself known. It would be good to connect in case there are more 'writers' blogs' explorers' floating in digital (or offline) space.ER