They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece - not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home. A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly. Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet. To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

The pressure even gets to those who work for themselves - and are being well-compensated for it. "I haven't died yet," said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. "At some point, I'll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen." "This is not sustainable," he said.

Whether the Internet will ever become a seed bed for full-length movies remains to be seen. The independent filmmaker Joe Swanberg ("Kissing on the Mouth," "LOL"), who was hired by Nervevideo.com to create what he describes as an "indie soap opera for the Web" called "Young American Bodies," said the Net is the wrong place to watch a conventional narrative of conventional length.

"I have a hard time focusing on the computer screen for 90 minutes,” Mr. Swanberg, 25, said. "A feature film isn’t interactive. I think a theater is still the best venue for that." Yet Web users have already shown that they can bend a movie to their tastes. The most obvious instance has been New Line Cinema's coming film Snakes on a Plane, which was the subject of endless Internet interest, mostly spoofing the title and its self-evident premise. New Line decided to play to this audience by incorporating some of its ideas, requiring a week of reshoots and a change in ratings from PG-13 to R.

"We really got to service the fans," said "Snakes" director David Ellis. "Decisions are usually made by guys 50, 60 years old. They only know during test screenings. If you can get it out early, you can deliver what they want." Still, to let the audience feel genuinely in charge of the phenomenon, Mr. Ellis and New Line had to sacrifice prerogatives that directors and movie companies normally hold dear. "The worst thing we can do is take it over," New Line’s marketing chief, Russell Schwartz, said of trying to control the "Snakes" Web boom.

These new horizons are not to everyone’s liking. Pointing to the precedent of American Idol, Mr. Gilmore said, "If you were told a decade ago that a TV show would determine the next major pop star, would you believe it? I have a fear of the tyranny of mass taste." Mr. Gilmore also wondered what sort of "filtering mechanisms" would evolve on the Internet, if any. Of course what makes the Web attractive is that there are no gatekeepers — managers, agents, studio executives, or film-festival programmers — to get past. But that’s also what makes finding truly satisfying entertainment difficult. On YouTube alone tens of thousands of videos are posted every day.

I've already started the book and . . . it's gonna be a lot of fun to write and there are some super, I mean incredible blogs on the Net.

In 1998 Ms. Rice rejoined the Roman Catholic Church for the first time since suffering a "total breakdown of faith" at age 18. "That was in 1960, before Vatican II, and I was a very strictly brought-up Catholic," she explained. "I lost my faith because what I had been taught was so wrong." An overwhelming desire to "return to the banquet table" and assurances from a priest in New Orleans that she didn't have to resolve all her differences with the church (most notably over the issue of homosexuality) led to the reconciliation.

"Christ the Lord" is one result of Ms. Rice's rediscovery of her faith. With classic Ricean audacity, the story is told in the first person by Jesus himself. Otherwise, "Christ the Lord" seems likely to surprise Ms. Rice's fans and detractors alike. It is devoid of vampires, witches and feverishly gothic prose. Instead, in simple sentences, it describes the domestic life of an extended Jewish family in first-century Palestine as seen through the eyes of a 7-year-old boy who has only an inkling of his true nature.

*****

Ms. Rice, however, does not suffer casual observations. "Only people who don't know my books," she said gravely, would perceive the change as a major shift. A clumsy question about demons provoked an icy response: "I never wrote about demons. Have you ever read my books?" In particular, Ms. Rice bristles at the notion, held by some ill-informed persons, that her vampire books are light amoral entertainment. "I think they're very Christian books," she insisted, "by somebody outside the church, lost in the darkness, striving to find meaning and sometimes being rebellious."

On the Internet she has challenged bloggers who dismiss her, on religious grounds and otherwise, as unqualified to take on the subject. "I tell them it's sincerely written and it's the Jesus of the Gospels," she said.

Ms. Rice's best-known characters may turn to piles of ash in daylight, but she craves it. When the real sun comes up, it floods her bedroom and balcony. That and the proximity of Christopher are the main reasons she chose La Jolla. "I get very high from the light," she said. In the closet are stashed dozens of pink and blue printed flannel nightgowns, some still wrapped in plastic, a year's supply of Ms. Rice's favorite work clothes. "They shrink and get rough after you wash them a few times," she explained.

"Ok I'm from the UK, and the comedy phrase 'I'm the only gay in the village' is a reference to a gay big brother reality tv show contestant who was from a small Welsh village. Basically the show's producers brought in another gay contestant later on in the game and he was much more experienced, and the first gay contestant felt like his role had been usurped: 'he was the only gay in the big brother house!'....The idea came from that [show] and from the comedy show Little Britain [in which this] fictional gay man 'thinks' hes the only gay in the village but he isn't. And when he realizes he's not, his catch phrase is "I'm the only gay in this village!"

So in theory what the guys said was not that bad, but you have to know the comedy show to get it, and realise that this show is playing on the idea of political correctness. I know that might not make sense to people from the US, but in my own opinion the guy should have not made the assumption that everyone was a fan." --Posted by lizzieeatworld

"I feel bad for the guy in general. If his whole book's campaign has to rest on the idea of managing to shortly outsell another beloved series ("Hotter than Potter"), then obviously he's struggling a little. The jokes, though probably not meant to be offensive, were definitely weak. And as to Jo's villains being "wimps"? People have got to understand that villains don't have to be dark and sinister and after our souls, or whatever. Dolores Umbridge was scarier to me than any demon because she was attacking Harry on and ideas-level, rather than just coming after him with physical force." --Posted by eruanna317

13. think about maximizing the manuscript of the novel in microsoft word
14. think briefly about my future
15. feel a little doomed
16. drink the rest of the coffee
17. look on the internet for something to inspire me
*****
35. select-all my novel and change the font size to eight and single-space it all, to gain perspective
36. scroll down, quickly, like a game
37. stop suddenly
38. read over a section
39. delete a comma that i had added the day before
40. delete an adjective that i had added the day before
41. delete some other things that i had added the day before
42. go to the part that i consistently enjoy working on and write one or two sentences and add em-dash parentheticals to a few places
43. rewrite those one or two sentences for a long time
44. finally combine the two sentences into one sentence and rewrite that sentence and then finally get a really good sentence there
*****
54. tell myself to spend one hour straight only working on the novel
55. acknowledge to myself that it won't happen
*****
84. google myself
85. google my favorite authors
86. google my name and the names of my favorite authors
87. maximize my novel and think about screaming
88. check e-mail
89. go to amazon.com and read reviews of books by lorrie moore etc. also, i left out 'check how many people have visited my blog,' 'read other people's blogs and make amusing, irrelevant comments,' 'put my head down on the desk and listen to one or two songs without thinking,' and some other things

"a defining moment when you know someone has gone off the deep end. Inspired by Tom Cruise's recent behavior on Oprah. Also see 'jump the shark.'"

"Writers have to be promoters if they believe in their work. Blogs are a way for authors to communicate directly with readers and establish a personal connection. It's a way to reach readers who may not attend bookstore events, and it's more convenient for authors, too. I haven't met too many writers who were eager to fly to Houston for a day -- though I'm sure Houston is lovely this time of year."

I currently have a news page, but it's not a real blog in the sense of running daily musings on the inner life of a writer. My faux-blog -- the guy who designed my site calls it the "Dolblog," a nickname I may formally adopt someday -- is the ultimate in self-aggrandizement, something I am the first to admit. It notes bookstore appearances, mentions in the press, and funny experiences I've had while promoting my novel. It's not like other authors' blogs, in which they reveal their insecurities, their slights, the fact that their partners are angry at them. Through their blogs, many of which are updated daily, these authors are able to grow and cultivate an audience between books.

When I told my mother about the Virtual Book Tour, she said to me, "You won't start a blog, will you? I wouldn't want you to write anything too personal!" Unfortunately, the jig is already up, and she knows it. As an author who works in a confessional vein, I believe that writing is the art of telling secrets. I find no shame in it; while not all of my work is autobiographical, I have no problem with using some of my life's stories as inspiration. A portion of what I write about in my fiction and nonfiction is material that could also be covered in a blog. Yet were I to start blogging, whatever the benefits might be -- increased visibility for my books, that sense of instant cyberspace gratification -- I'm not certain what the damage would be to my other work.

Imagine, for a moment, if blogs were not a recent phenomenon: Would Philip Roth have blogged about his divorces? Would J.D. Salinger have posted entries about his reluctance to publish again? I was asked recently, "If you're a real writer, do you blog?" Absolutely, if you want to. I think someday bloggers will be recognized, server space permitting, as the great chroniclers of our time, joining serial scribes like Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens, Herb Caen and Armistead Maupin. For unpublished writers, blogging is a fantastic -- arguably, the best -- way to get noticed by an agent or publisher and get a book deal. But I wonder how many published or even unpublished writers would do better to spend less time blogging and more time working on their books.

Ever since my first book, She's Got Issues, got published, the first question everyone asked me was, "How do you think up your characters?" At first I lied. I said, "Um . . . I don’t know, I guess they're a composite of people I've met over the years." I thought that sounded good. I've heard other authors use that line, so I figured, what the hell.

But the truth is . . . I hear voices. I can easily imagine how frightening that must sound to people who don’t. That's why I typically keep that information to myself.

A while ago, I just couldn't take it anymore so I went into my bathroom with a tape recorder and put together a tape of voices that are constantly vying for attention in my head. You can't imagine the racket I live with on a daily basis. But I never complain. Mostly because I'm so grateful that my affliction never developed into the other kind of "hearing voices." Schizophrenia has got to be infinitely more distracting.

When I made my CD of voices, I started with cartoon characters and then I moved on to friends, relatives and neighbors. Before long, I had a little story going about someone who was eavesdropping on their neighbor’s conversations which were accidentally being picked up on their baby monitor. The idea of me making a tape of voices started out as a joke. The next thing I knew I had a CD and my husband was playing it at parties as soon as I left the room. He’s much funnier in person.

Anyway, once I got the voices on tape, one by one, they all seemed to disappear. But then, another whole crop of voices took up the little vacancy and before I knew it, I was putting them down on paper. My whole book is about people talking to each other. I take full credit for writing it but the truth is all I did was write down what other people were saying.

As many of you know, writers are notorious for one thing. No, not heavy drinking (well, actually, that too). But what I meant was not writing. Yes, it’s true. Writers will go to almost any length to avoid actually writing. I have mentioned this before.

And although some of you wrote the last time I mentioned this that if I hate writing so much, I should just quit, this is not a feasible solution to the problem. I really can't quit because, unlike Napoleon Dynamite, I have no other skills (such as computer hacking).

So I am stuck with (not) writing for a living. Because I still haven’t sold my old house and now I have two mortgages to pay. Besides, writers do like to write when the writing is going well. Unfortunately the writing hardly ever goes well. And so we must resort to bizarre procrastination techniques, such as watching every Law and Order episode featuring Chris Noth, in order to put off writing....

But now that I have seen almost every episode of JUDGING AMY, I have had to resort to new procrastination techniques. I have, obviously, read every issue of People and US Weekly to hit the stands in the last two years. I have been over and over the Jen/Brad/Angelina love triangle, and was horrified, as no doubt all of you were, by the latest information on Tom Cruise...that he is dating Katie Holmes, sixteen years his junior and apparently soon to be sucked into Scientology, if she hasn't been already. I was stunned by the revelation about Renee Zellweger’s sudden marriage to a singer who is not Jack White, and I am waiting, as is the rest of America, with breathless anticipation for the birth of Britney's, and Jennifer Garner's, babies.

But my latest procrastination technique of choice is reading Star Wars message boards. I will admit, I'm about the biggest Star Wars fan that there can be. No, I don't have a Princess Leia costume.

How hard could blogging be? You roll out of bed, turn on your computer, scan the headlines, think up some clever analysis while brushing your teeth, type it onto your site and you're off.

But as I discovered, blogging is no longer for amateurs or the faint of heart. Blogging -- if it's done well -- has evolved into an all-consuming art.

I wasn't the only newcomer to blogging last week. On the ballyhooed Huffington Post, Gary Hart, Walter Cronkite and David Mamet dipped their toes in the blogosphere as well.

I don't know how they'll fare, but I doubt that celebrity will attract readers for long. To succeed in blogging you need to understand it's a craft, with its own tricks of the trade. You need a thick skin. And you must put your life on hold to feed an electronic black hole.

What else did I learn by sitting in for Dan Drezner? That I'm not cut out for blogging.

The insanity of being a writer includes ridiculous hours; even though all my friends think I wake up late, write for a few hours, and then spend the day either wandering the local beaches or meeting fascinating people.

The truth is -- I'm disciplined as a writer, probably more so than I am in anything else in life. I am at my desk within thirty to forty minutes of waking....

....In terms of daily output, this varies. My best days can come out with 25 good pages; my worst days, I am loathe to admit, end with me cutting 20 pages that aren't so good. But cutting those pages helps me move on with the novel. No use getting tangled up in brambles and deadwood. I don't come up with a book, sit down to write it and have it done six weeks later (well, depends on the book.) But I usually stew over a book for a good long time before sitting down to write it.

When I do sit down to write it, yes, that first draft comes fairly quickly (it's the discipline of writing -- it actually gets easier after doing this for more than a decade.) But "fairly quickly" ranges from six weeks to about four months, depending on the novel.

I know some novelists who write terrific novels in two weeks; others take years. I've had one novel, titled You Come When I Call You, that took me about 12 years from start to finish (although I worked on many other novels in between the start and finish.)

I am banning myself from the Internet.

No, not completely (though that might be nice). E-mail is pretty much a professional necessity for me at this point. I'll continue keeping this blog, because I enjoy writing it and others seem to enjoy reading it. I'll continue reading and occasionally responding to my LJ friends list, because it's one of the best ways I have of keeping in touch with friends (both real-life and electronic). I'll continue my eBay sales, because that little bit of extra income helps a lot. I'll maintain my website, and may even overhaul it soon. I'll keep reading eGullet, because it's a valuable food-writing resource and their membership policies keep the number of idiots way, way down.

That's the problem, you see: I have idiot fatigue. I don't except myself from this; the Internet has definitely made me dumber. I can't do anything about the other idiots, but I can do something about myself. I don't want to use Feedster to find out what people have said about me on their blogs. I don't want babybats who think I should just discreetly keel over dead if I'm not going to write that Lost Souls sequel.....

I've long said that the Internet can be a valuable tool for resource and promotion, and I still believe that. People used to liken it to CB radio. I think it's more like a gun: not inherently evil, but dangerous as hell if you mess around with it. The more time I spend online, the less I spend reading and writing, and I can't have that. It's time to get back to work. Fo' rizzle.

"I always liked the idea that SF stood for Speculative Fiction, mostly because it seemed to cover everything, and include the attitude that what we were doing involved speculation. SF was about thinking, about inquiring, about making things up."

"The challenge now is to go forward and to keep going forward: to tell stories that have weight and meaning. It's saying things that mean things, and using the literature of the imagination to do it."

"And that's something that each of us, and the writers who will come afterwards, are going to have to struggle with, to reinvent and make SF say what we need it to say."

So far, the idea to blog-away has worked for me. Instead of selling books, I pitch my speaking services. I have been blogging for four months and because of the blog, I have received ten for fee speaking engagements.