prillalar | LJ and organization

LJ and organization

Is there ever a good way to call into work and say you can't come in today because you're bemused and have to stay home and write?

I didn't think so.

Anyhow, today's question is about fanfic-only LJs vs multi-purpose LJs. Some people, like me, post their fanfic mixed in all higgledy-piggledy with their other entries. Other people have special LJs for their fanfic posting. (Some people even have different LJs for different fandoms -- I can only imagine how many I would have to keep up in that case.)

I prefer to keep all my postings together -- my LJ is me, whether it's fic or blather or ~~brilliant meta~~ more blather.

On the reading side of things, I prefer it when people post their fic in their regular LJs. I don't read a lot of fanfic these days. When I do, it's because something on my friends list caught my eye. I don't feel comfortable friending fic-only journals because then I would feel like I had made a commitment to read and comment on, if not all, then most of the fic that dropped there. I don't feel that way about the fic that's just mixed in with regular posts.

I'm interested to hear your opinion on fic-only journals, both from a writer's and a reader's perspective. Do they work better for you? Do you keep several journals for different fandoms? Do you wish I would split my fic and blather up into two journals?

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I hate fic only journals.

Okay, maybe that's a bit strong. But I won't friend both a fic LJ and a 'regular' LJ, I'm either there for the fic or I'm there for the person, so if someone has a fic-only journal, they need to link to it from their regular LJ when they post fic because otherwise I'll never know about it.

I think everything should be all together, because it's more interesting that way, and that's what I like about LJ over mailing lists - that casual spill of multi-fandom, real life, fic and meta all together.

Passing by via friendsfriends :)

I prefer the all-in-one approach. For one thing, I am always interested in what my friends are writing, even if it's not a fandom I follow. I've been drawn into certain fandoms because a writer I read in one fandom started writing in another. I'm also interested in *who* is writing these things I like reading - their general musings are often as interesting as the fic itself. The downside of that is that there are quite a few people from RL on my friendslist, and I don't imagine I'm the only one who finds that happening. If you're someone who likes to keep fandom and RL seperate, I can see the benefit of having two journals.

I was *just* thinking of this exact issue two seconds before I hit refresh on my f'list.

The thing is, I finally caved in and created a fic filter on my LJ (for communities and the like), but honestly? I never use it. I like seeing everything - family sagas, new job reports, baby pictures, fanfic, recipes, philosophical meanderings, art, activist links, news reports - all mooshed together

I'm one of those people with a fic-journal, but I have to admit it's primarily for archival purposes. If I WANT a fic to be read (which isn't very often) I'll double post it on the archival fic journal AND my LJ.

I have a fic-only journal which actually isn't an LJ at all, it's in GreatestJournal. But when I post something there, I generally link to it here in my general LJ.

This has two advantages - people who follow my normal LJ do see the fics get posted, which is the first advantage. The second is that later, when people are going back looking for earlier stories, they DON'T have to wade through miles of personal crap, because they just have to go directly to the GJ, which has nothing but stories. ^_^

I don't always post links here in my LJ - if it's something I'm not sure I'll finish or just random maundering, or if I already posted notices about it in relevant communities, I often don't post links here. But for the bigger stuff, I do.

as a journaler:
I have a facade!journal for RL, a mod journal for a community (which I share with two others) (

three_aspects), a RP journal (

a_preacher_tm, sadly neglected of late), a link journal (

permit_a_forum), and this default journal...that's MORE than enough to keep up with so the default gets mixed with stuff both fandom and RL

as a reader:
if you have a mixed journal, use the memories function thoroughly. =)

Well,

ashe_frost and I have

the_aa where we both post our shorter fics... I'm not much of a ficlet writer myself and WtDBI is took huge per-chapter to be posted here, so I just mostly post a header on my own LJ and link there. It really just works better for archiving purposes.

It also kind of means that Ashe and I are viewed as a unit, as we always work together on our own fics... It's kind of like having a joint back account. We have a shared email address, too...

Broadly speaking, I'm not a big fan of fic!journals. I don't have anyone on my list for their fic, really - I don't have much time to read any at the moment, anyway! I have more than enough communities for fics...

.a.

I've occasionally thought about splitting my journal into fannish and non-fannish, but never considered a fiction-only journal. I mean. What would I do that for, eh? The only fiction-only journal I read is

mamadeb's, and I'm not even sure why I do that, considering that she links to the stories in her regular journal.

I have a fic only LJ, and I have a lot of folks who've friended it who have not friended my regular LJ. On the other hand, I periodically announce in my regular LJ that I've a fic lj (and there's always someone who's suprised, despite the fic ij being linked from my user info page.)

My reason for having a fic only LJ is because I post fic in about 50 different fandoms. Having the fic in a separate LJ helps keep things organised and helps readers go back through old posts and find those stories they're interested in (I list fandom/pairing in the subject line).

People who dislike reading separate ljs for fic, of authors whose work they enjoy are not my problem or concern. It isn't hurting me any, and they're missing out on something they might like to read. But I post several places (fandom specific, my author's mailing list, my website). If someone likes my writing, they don't have to friend my lj - the main benefit is that I post to my fic lj first. (Then clean up typos which are pointed out. ;-) )

I kinda hate reading fiction on LiveJournal, so I don't have much more affection for fic-only journals. *g* I'd much rather have everything in once place.

I'm LiveJournal impaired, though. Maybe people who have fancy designs and stuff don't have the issue of despising the LJ format for reading a story that I have. Maybe I'm just a freak.

Maybe I need coffee.

A fic-only journal makes my "LJs that post fiction" filter neater but I think you LJ the way that suits you.

Like you, my LJ is me and all my the kinds fannish business is posted here.

I have a writing journal that is locked and only read by those kind persons who have agreed to beta. I only post unfinished work there, under lock by fandom. Finished stories are posted to my LJ.

On my flist there are people with fan and non-fan journals, fiction and non-fiction journals. I've not found the variations to be a problem or an annoyance.

everything she said...

then again, i don't friend lj's for the fic...ever. i friend for interesting posters or friends (where i put up with the spam and ham sandwiches :-)

the only reason i could see a fic lj be real useful (b/c i've thought about making a meta-only one for myself) is that you can find stuff in that cesspool of trivia that most of our lj's are...but then there are memories (which i so wish had a better interface!!!)

I'm with you -- I prefer everything all together in one journal. Frankly, I'm not that much of a fic reader to begin with, so that, to me, is never the main reason to friend somebody.

I have a separate, friends-only, "beta-readers" journal that I use to post unfinished parts of stories for comments, but I will always post the finished stories in my regular lj, or a link to the story on my web site for longer stuff.

I'm in a bit of a disconnect these days, in that most of the people on my friendslist aren't even in my primary fandom. They're people (like you!) with whom I used to share a fandom, whom I met on mailing lists or through links to their ljs, who are interesting and cool, and I want to keep up with them. If I have any familiarity with the fandoms they're currently writing in, I'll sometimes check out their stories, but for the most part, I'm just as happy reading their meta and looking at pictures of their cats.

I like multi-purpose LJs better.
If I read someones fiction on a regular basis, I'm also interested in who that person is, what she/he's doing, how she/he feels.
So I'm definitely against splitting. ::nods::

I have (or am) a second journal for fandom. This wasn't exactly my first choice for splitting things up, but since

ursule is read by an equal mixture of people I know in real life who like fic, people I know in real life who are bemused by or filled with virulent hatred for fic, fannish types, and people I friended because we agreed on books, having everything together became inconvenient. I decided a second journal was better than filtering all the fic I produced. I think I lose comments this way, though.

I have two journals. One is this account, which gets fanfic and real life and quizzes and what-the-fuck-ever, and the other, which is dormant except when I'm writing origific. The origific journal is friends-only, and mostly a way for me to keep track of what I have and who is allowed to read it.

I vastly prefer the multi-purpose journal... and archived fic posts in the memories section. The writers whose stuff I love reading are interesting people, and I like to read their posts. If I happen not to be interested in a particular post, I skip it. Easy enough, hm?

People have fic-only journals? Boy, am I out of touch.

I have friended the

vidding LJ because many different people post vids there, but also because there's technical and creative conversation. If it was just posts of vids, I might still have friended it, but I wouldn't feel obliged to d/l every vid there.

But if it were just one person's vidding LJ? Hmm. I guess it would depend on the person. (: I can't imagine that, though. Vids take too long to make; you'd have maybe one post a month. Unless you're

sdwolfpup, but she is self-avowedly insane. (:

Here's my two cents:

I currently have just the one journal, but I'm planning to shortly create a seperate journal for open posting of fanfic. Why? Because I have real life people on my flist who I'd rather keep out of my fandom life--specifically my older sister, who would would hold it over my head the rest of my life if she knew I wrote slash. But that puts me in a bind, because if I post fanfic under a friends filter then I can't share it with the fandom at large. So my solution was to create a seperate journal in which to post fiction without a lock and use filtered posts on

mad_maudlin to link to them.

I like multipurpose journals, too, but I know not everyone does--some people want to keep their fandoms and their real life seperate, some poeple like the fic but don't care about the health problems of the author's cockatiel, et cetera. Frankly, I'm astonished by the amount of RL bitching and moaning my flisties put up with from me. :)

::hands Killa some coffee::

I must be LJ-impaired, too, since I use the most plain style in the most boring colors (black, white, and grey) for all my pages. I've learned to live with reading stories on LJ, but when I do recs, I jump through hoops trying to find an alternate (and easily accessible) site to link to.

Mind you...posting stories on LJ does wonders for one's comments (I'm on the third page of comments for a silly little HP meta story I wrote the other week), but I'd still rather *read* fiction on a 'proper' webpage.

****

btw...Hal? The other thing that occured to me is that there *may* be reason to read a fic-only LJ if you really like someone's writing yet find them...troublesome. Now, in my case, I usually find that there's a pretty strong correlation betweeen fic writers I enjoy and *people* I enjoy, because more often than not, some aspects of the writer's real life personality/interests/whatever bleeds through into the fiction. It's incredibly rare for me to like a writer's work - friended or not - and then discover I don't like much about them. However, I know this isn't true for other people.

both as reader and writer i like mixed journals. i already get itchy now that more and more artists split up their journals, guh.

Mulch it all together - tastes good that way.

I started out with an open personal journal into which everything went, including fic. After the third time I was trolled, I locked my journal. That was when I split off a ficjournal, because I wanted to keep the fic in the open. If I had simply gone with the fic-filter, it would not have been possible to keep my friends-only-notice-post as the first/only public entry in my journal.

It's all about logistics, for me. That and the best way to protect myself from the assholes.

All my fanning, and muse-posts still go in the personal journal, though. The fic journal is... almost a professional persona. Only fic I'm ready to make public goes there. All the lead-up still goes in the personal journal. *ponders* Initially, I made a note in my personal journal when I posted something over in the ficjournal, but I've stopped doing that, except in unusual cases. Like when I take up a new fandom, or have broken my posted-in-one-day record or such.

I suppose that was another consideration, actually. When I'm on a roll I post stories very frequently, and I wanted to give my general friends the option of not drowning in fic posts.

Whichever way my friends arrange their journals is fine with me. If you split off a fic journal, I expect I'd friend that one, too, so I can keep track of you when tenipuri_yaoi has frustrated me over the edge of disgust once again.

Not fanfic specifically, but sort of the same - I have a (neglected) icon/graphics journal. On the rare occasions when I actually posted icons or graphics anywhere, it'd be in communities, and I'd never remember or feel inclined to link to those posts from my main journal - because it more or less held true that anyone interested in those things would already have seen it in the community. (In fact, the community of folks I tend to interact with in graphics communities, icon contests and the like doesn't overlap very much with my friend/friend-of lists.) The hazard of posting that way, though, is that if the communities were ever to be deleted (as happened just recently), the posts I made would be gone, regardless of whether or not I had them in my memories. Thus, what I decided to do was create a specific journal just for posting icons and such, and to link to those posts from the communities (as a fair amount of people do). That way I'd still be hitting just the target audience, as it were (people watching the graphics communities) and I'd have a little insurance against community deletion. I didn't really expect anyone to friend that journal, though.

I don't have any fic-only journals on my list, but I do have a couple icon-only journals. I think the difference is that with icon makers, I can occasionally be interested in the visual/technical aspects of what someone is producing without being interested in the creator or their fandoms. (Sidenote: that's not to say that I ever feel obligated to feedback someone's graphics just because I'm watching their graphics-only journal.) With fic, I'm more likely than not to be primarily interested in the author (rather than the fic itself) as a result of fandoms or other elements in common, and I enjoy having it all mashed together - fic and meta and "eggs wot I had for breakfast" and all that stuff.

Given that you asked about fic-only journals and not graphics stuff, I'm not sure how relevant that is, but. *g*

i like that you bring this up, because i actually completely disagree. there are quite a few artists whose work i like, but i don't have much interest in reading their journals (that may be horrible to say, but there generally isn't the connection there that makes me want to friend fellow writers). so i'm always rather thrilled when i discover someone is keeping a separate art journal. i think this still holds for the fic-only journals, even though my use may differ (in that i'm more likely to friend the whole-shebang journal and read the fiction and links-to-fiction that they provide). still, there are some authors whose work i enjoy but do not have friended simply because their journals don't hold my interest. that's where i rely on the lj grapevine to keep me informed.

I don't have much of a feeling about fic-only journals. When I was involved in fandom, I had a fandom-only journal (I'm not 'out' about slash and fandom in my RL), but it wasn't even close to fic-only. These days, I mostly read fic by people I REALLY like, and with most of those people I'm interested in their RL, too, so it's more convenient for me if they have one LJ.

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