I’ve been blogging since 2004, and I couldn’t wait for my turn as Curator of the Week. My how things have changed. It offered me an indulgent Sunday morning to explore the full list of SheWrites bloggers. We have both a fabulous cross-section of women here and a startling diversity in our lives as writers. I splashed around in the deep end of the pool, fascinated to find blogs ranging from drinking to feminism, motherhood, spirituality, and always women writing, women writing, women writing. After doing the math to magically shrink 700 terrific blogs down to three, here are my choices.

1) A Patchwork Life by Jackie Regales
2) Diary of a Heretic by Kathleen Maher
3) A Century of Nerve, by Emma Bolden


A Patchwork Life by Jackie Regales

Jackie’s patchwork blog, started in 2007, combines her writing, learning, parenting and work as a school teacher. Her words never reveal the chaos behind her calm, thoughtful prose, except in early November. Jackie had an “unbloggable issue” and went silent for a bit. Perhaps better to do so than write what can’t be spoken in difficult times. Her silence didn’t last long, and her heart returned to tell us more.

Sidebars, an important part of a blog’s structure, lead the reader a glimpse into the fullness of her life: Cook’s Choice, Learning by Going Where I Need to Go, and Bookwormings.

Even in autumn, Jackie’s thoughts were wrapped in the holidays, as she wrote: “I am craving pot roast, and mashed potatoes, roasted chicken and fresh-picked apples, and a far-off scent of Christmas cookies. At night I burrow beneath flannels and goose-feathers, and today I wrap myself in layers of knits.”

Jackie earns bonus points today for having snow falling down her blog too. Go see it.


Diary of a Heretic, by Kathleen Maher
http://www.diaryofaheretic.com/

If a blog could be everything paper can be, or even more, we’d want to carry it around to read all day, from sofa to porch swing, to airport. We would save it to read again, and to share with friends.

Kathleen Maher’s Diary of a Heretic combines powerful short fiction with compelling graphics. Read it at the risk of spending a whole day there, but if you love strong fiction, you’ll gain so much.

Equally compelling is her long list of links to Muses, Prophets, Bards, Seekers, Visionaries and Voyagers.


A Century of Nerve, by Emma Bolden

Emma Bolden has an impressive bio. She is editor of the Georgetown Review, author of three chapbooks, and has her work published in the finest print and online journals. Accolades for Emma include scholarships, prizes and being a fellowship finalist.

As she counts down her “twelve days of blogging” this month, we learn she was so busy that she rarely read for pleasure, until an illness slowed her down. She makes up for lost time, and shares her list with us. In it, Emma admits she can’t get to the end of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, because: “I feel the need to high-five Virginal Woolf at the end of each sentence.”

That's my list. The opportunity to be this week’s SheWrites curator led me down a path of inspiration and light, and I am pleased to see so many writers really understand the complex point of blogging well. I’ve never known writer’s block but if I did, an hour with any of SheWrites great bloggers is a sure cure. When you read a good blog, you’re compelled to write.