Novelist Mansoura Ezz Eldin: On Starting a Blog

Award-winning Egyptian novelist Mansoura Ez Eldin recently started up a blog focused on creative writing: http://mansouraezeldin.blogspot.com/. So…great! And we wanted to know why:
.
ArabLit: Why did you decide to start a blog?
.
Mansoura Ez Eldin: I was considering this step a long time ago. I’ve always admired many Egyptian bloggers and wanted to begin blogging myself but I never had enough time. Then I wanted to have a sort of electronic archive of my writings, but I was too lazy to do this till I began writing a weekly column in Alssada (an Emirati magazine) since the beginning of 2012 and received many emails from the magazine’s readers who asked me about my website or blog to follow my other writings.
.
AL: Why now?
.
MEE: On one hand I’m on a long leave from my work in Akhbar al-Adab and have more time than before. On the other I had to go through an obligatory isolation since last February and will be totally immersed in taking care of my new baby for months to come, so I wanted to keep myself busy with something that I love and that enables me to have a channel to post my writing and comments to others.
.
AL: Do you think you will share works in progress, or pieces that are already finished? Is جبل الزمرد still in progress? Or it is finished?
.
MEE:  I rarely share works in progress, so I’ll only share pieces that are finished. As for “The Emerald Mountain” I finished the first manuscript and working now on revising and editing it.
.
AL: This is for your creative work, or also thoughts about life / politics?
.
MEE: It’s mainly for my creative work and my the articles that I write from time to time to newspapers and magazines, but I’m sure that I’ll write exclusive pieces only for the blog.
.
AL: Who do you hope to read it? Fellow authors, members of the reading public, … ?
.
MEE: I hope the readers of the blog will various from fellow authors to the readers of my books and new potential readers whom I don’t expect.
.
Other Egyptian poets and novelists who have multilingual blogs include Iman Mersal, Ibrahim Farghali, and of course Youssef Rakha.
.
I don’t understand the sudden spacing problems; they don’t appear when I edit or write the post, only if you look at the published version. Hm.