Writing about writers- perils and revelations

After writing a list for Flavorpill about 33 Women Music Critics You Need to Read, I realized a few things:

1) It can be dangerous to your ego to write about scribes that you really admire. As you list their accomplishments and great works, you start to get self-conscious about your own work and wonder ‘how the hell can I measure up to that?’

2) You realize that some writers should be doing a better job of promoting their own work, by having a homepage with links to their articles and a resume of their work (which reminds me that I gotta do the same).

3) Unless you’re willing to do a list of 1000, you’ll never get all the items that you’ll want to on any list. And even if you do 1000, you’ll still be missing some. For this particular list, I started with 15, then 20, then 25, then 30 and ended up with 33. Even then, I started realizing that I missed a number of people that I should have included there. You can’t be all-inclusive.

4) A number of the people on the list wrote to thank me profusely and I said to them ‘you earned it!’ It makes me think that they don’t get anywhere near the recognition that they deserve.