In which I celebrate the surprising nature of the blogosphere. Or, in which I am a little serious and long-winded and must beg your kind indulgence.

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Until very recently, I did not really know what the blogosphere was. I knew it was out there, but it had a large Here Be Dragons sign hanging over it. I did not read blogs, except for the Huffington Post, which is so big and grand that it doesn’t feel like a blog at all. I did write for a while for the Guardian books blog, but I could not quite get the tone - was it journalism, opinion, something quite else? - and when my editor went on maternity leave, I let it lapse.

I used to be an early adopter. I had email when it was such a baby that I only had my cousin in New York to correspond with. I spoke to a nice man at BT about getting a Blackberry when they were still reserved for corporate clients.
‘Are you a company?’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I write books.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’ve never spoken to a book writer before.’
(We had a lovely conversation about literature after that. I wish I could remember his name.)

But now, the big new world of technocrazy scares me witless. It’s too unknowable and unnavigable. Like all those in fear, I retreated into prejudice. Every columnist with a deadline to meet and a mind blank of ideas has a failsafe: let’s bitchslap the blogosphere this week. I nodded my head as they told me that bloggers were sad geeks with no lives, or preening exhibitionists, or deranged narcissists, begging for attention. I quite saw all the arguments about privacy and even dignity. I agreed that it was an exercise in solipsistic self-indulgence (who the hells cares what you think?).

Then I had a book out. I cared about this book possibly more than any other I have ever written (reasons to come later). I was going to do everything I could to make it a success. I could blog the book, and it would go viral, and I would dance off into the sunset.
I stifled my doubts about throwing my paltry thoughts out in public (as a child, I was often told my grown-ups to stop showing off). But then an entire new set of terrors raced into view. There are around 200 million blogs in the world. Who would want to read mine? Who would even find mine? I would be like one of those discarded bits of spaceship, floating around in a blind universe. I would be yelling into the wind. And even if someone did find me, what if I was doing it wrong? What if the real pros stumbled onto my very basic site, gave a collective sneer, and turned away in disdain?

But here is the absolutely lovely, astonishing, miraculous thing. Through a stumbling serendipity of different internet tools and sheer damn luck, I found myself in the most charming corner of the blogosphere. It’s like one of those tiny streets that only natives of a city know about, lined with painted houses and heavenly shops that sell botanical prints and calligraphy pens and old maps of the world and out of print copies of Michael Arlen.

The other bloggers who follow me turn out to be funny, fascinating, ironic, irreverent, self-deprecating and unbelievably generous. They leave supportive comments and whimsical jokes at the bottom of my posts. They are nothing like the stereotypes that the newspapers adore to deride. Entering the blogosphere is like going to a huge new school where you have no friends and do not know the rules. For me, being found by these particular bloggers is like having the really cool girls inviting you to join their gang on the very first day.

The most lovely twist to this is that the book is all about sending out a big collective ‘bloody well done’ to the women. The zeitgeist likes to tell women that most of the decisions they make are wrong; plus, their bottoms are too big. Sarah and I wanted to talk about all the wonderful unsung ways that women navigate the convolutions of the new century. We practically wrote poems about the joy and profundity of female friendship (my slightly controversial view is that it is more important than romantic love). Well, the people who have come to my blog are all women, and they are shining examples of everything that we talk about in Backwards in High Heels.

So, Recessionista, Néné, Mrs Trefusis, Lucy Fishwife, Lucy and Cassandra – thank you for such an unexpected welcome. You have turned the vast, dark expanses of the interwebs into an enchanted garden. Even if my evil plan to conquer the blogosphere does not come to fruition, and Backwards in High Heels never goes viral, you have made it all worth it. You are the very women that we wrote the book for.