Thoughts on Posting Subject Material (hopefully not as pretentious as that sounds)
I found it useful to post this poll asking what people enjoyed/would enjoy reading on my livejournal. Surprising at some points, too. I mean, I never would have realized that people wanted me to stop posting about Barely Legal Lesbian Space Vampires if it hadn't been for wilowisp. I also never knew that brent_woodfill had such a passionate dislike of cats; I'll have to remember to send him a picture of mine for Christmas.
I was surprised (in a "Well, of course" sort of way) to realize that most of you are not that interested in reading about the various mundane writing-related (but not actually writing) tasks that take up a fair portion of an active writer's life (and an even larger portion if she's been running around so much she hasn't actually sat down and written in far too long, but she still want to feel like she's squeezing in writerly things around the edges). It makes sense. Most of you aren't writers, and of those of you who are, many are not the same type of writer that I am. Of course you're not that interested in spec-fic markets or what submissions I sent off today. Mind you, I'll still post about this, but I'll put it behind a cut-tag that indicates clearly that no actual writing excerpts or insights into the process are contained behind the cut. If you don't like any posts about writing, I've no idea why you tolerate my livejournal at all! Posting writing logs, even when there's no actual writing involved, serves a useful motivational purpose for me, so I'll keep posting them; the main purpose there is not to entertain (I only promised to try for some proportion of entertainment, after all!). People seem to enjoy them more when they're about my actual writing, with excerpts and whatnot, so I'll leave those above the cut. Suggestions (so long as they don't involve Barely Legal Lesbian Space Vampires) are welcome for ways to make it more entertaining as well as a useful motivational tool.
I was also startled by the high number of people interested in the documentation of my day-to-day life. I always assume that everybody else finds that boring...even given that one of the main uses of livejournal in my circle is to keep in touch with absent (or just plain busy) friends. Also, this could get dangerous. Still, I will oblige and try to write more about my day-to-day life...though I'll still try to filter out the worst (most boring) offenders.
I wasn't expecting people to be interested in posts about my martial arts training. So far, I've not talked about it much (once past the initial rush of infatuation during which I must've irritated everybody under the sun!). I've been thinking about posting more; the question was whether I would make it a "martial arts log" locked to private (on the premise that very few people would be interested in it) or whether I would just keep it in a log not on lj (I've got a couple of those). I truly thought people would get bored or irritated by it. In conclusion: you haven't really had a chance to yet. I'll try to keep my posts interesting, but we'll see what you think about this idea six months down the road.
I was a bit worried about the number of people interested in restaurant, book, and/or movie reviews, but then it occurred to me: I haven't really done these yet, so how would you know whether you like them or not?
Turns out my worries about the acceptability of the excessive number of Flickr photos that I've been posting for the last month or so were not unfounded. Not really a surprise--some people particularly liked 'em, some didn't. It didn't help that I was compulsively hunting through Flickr photographs to distract myself from The Stress-Hell That Is My Life sometimes. Mmm, Stress-Hell! I'll still post my photos on a regular basis, 'cause, y'know, you'll look at 'em and like 'em or else! For all the others, though, I'm thinking a "best of the week" post with thumbnails of "the rest of the week" under a cut. Should work well. Everybody still gets to see the pretty pictures if they want to, but they won't swamp your friends page. Was thinking about doing something similar anyway, and the predominate nature of the posts I make tends to go in cycles.
...And I have a suspicion that when I offered "random things I find interesting" as an option, people read "what I really want to post about, but need your permission to do so." Which is silly. I tend to believe that other people will also find interesting what I find interesting. This makes me rather hazardous at parties, occasionally, but it also means I don't usually feel that I need permission to post whatever. No, I was talking about honest-to-goodness randomness (ignore the photographs). Do other people really find this sort of serendipitous approach so intriguing? Because there's more, lots more! I generally only post these things when I'm feeling whimsical (admittedly, not an infrequent event).
I was surprised (in a "Well, of course" sort of way) to realize that most of you are not that interested in reading about the various mundane writing-related (but not actually writing) tasks that take up a fair portion of an active writer's life (and an even larger portion if she's been running around so much she hasn't actually sat down and written in far too long, but she still want to feel like she's squeezing in writerly things around the edges). It makes sense. Most of you aren't writers, and of those of you who are, many are not the same type of writer that I am. Of course you're not that interested in spec-fic markets or what submissions I sent off today. Mind you, I'll still post about this, but I'll put it behind a cut-tag that indicates clearly that no actual writing excerpts or insights into the process are contained behind the cut. If you don't like any posts about writing, I've no idea why you tolerate my livejournal at all! Posting writing logs, even when there's no actual writing involved, serves a useful motivational purpose for me, so I'll keep posting them; the main purpose there is not to entertain (I only promised to try for some proportion of entertainment, after all!). People seem to enjoy them more when they're about my actual writing, with excerpts and whatnot, so I'll leave those above the cut. Suggestions (so long as they don't involve Barely Legal Lesbian Space Vampires) are welcome for ways to make it more entertaining as well as a useful motivational tool.
I was also startled by the high number of people interested in the documentation of my day-to-day life. I always assume that everybody else finds that boring...even given that one of the main uses of livejournal in my circle is to keep in touch with absent (or just plain busy) friends. Also, this could get dangerous. Still, I will oblige and try to write more about my day-to-day life...though I'll still try to filter out the worst (most boring) offenders.
I wasn't expecting people to be interested in posts about my martial arts training. So far, I've not talked about it much (once past the initial rush of infatuation during which I must've irritated everybody under the sun!). I've been thinking about posting more; the question was whether I would make it a "martial arts log" locked to private (on the premise that very few people would be interested in it) or whether I would just keep it in a log not on lj (I've got a couple of those). I truly thought people would get bored or irritated by it. In conclusion: you haven't really had a chance to yet. I'll try to keep my posts interesting, but we'll see what you think about this idea six months down the road.
I was a bit worried about the number of people interested in restaurant, book, and/or movie reviews, but then it occurred to me: I haven't really done these yet, so how would you know whether you like them or not?
Turns out my worries about the acceptability of the excessive number of Flickr photos that I've been posting for the last month or so were not unfounded. Not really a surprise--some people particularly liked 'em, some didn't. It didn't help that I was compulsively hunting through Flickr photographs to distract myself from The Stress-Hell That Is My Life sometimes. Mmm, Stress-Hell! I'll still post my photos on a regular basis, 'cause, y'know, you'll look at 'em and like 'em or else! For all the others, though, I'm thinking a "best of the week" post with thumbnails of "the rest of the week" under a cut. Should work well. Everybody still gets to see the pretty pictures if they want to, but they won't swamp your friends page. Was thinking about doing something similar anyway, and the predominate nature of the posts I make tends to go in cycles.
...And I have a suspicion that when I offered "random things I find interesting" as an option, people read "what I really want to post about, but need your permission to do so." Which is silly. I tend to believe that other people will also find interesting what I find interesting. This makes me rather hazardous at parties, occasionally, but it also means I don't usually feel that I need permission to post whatever. No, I was talking about honest-to-goodness randomness (ignore the photographs). Do other people really find this sort of serendipitous approach so intriguing? Because there's more, lots more! I generally only post these things when I'm feeling whimsical (admittedly, not an infrequent event).