aaaaaaaaargh

[layla]

I am awash in LJ's and I don't know what to do with them all.

The following is basically self-indulgent ramblings because I'm trying to figure out how to break up my creative stuff between my different journals, and I'm writing out the whole situation to help me figure out what to do. Hence, you're warned that the organization and lucidity of this post is not all it might be, since it's only meant to make sense to me. On the other hand, if you want to weigh in on my dilemma, you're more than welcome! Actually, if you're a creative person, I'd love to hear about your own personal strategy for posting content -- do you have only one blog where you do all your personal journaling as well as posting pieces of art and writing? Do you have a community? A message board?

Anyway, carrying on. Awhile back I created icefallpress, a community, to replace the old Kismet forum, which was virtually defunct anyway. I created it as a community so that anybody could post a topic, forum style, which turned out to be wildly optimistic, since no one but me actually has. (I'm not blaming anybody for that, since I created it around the time Hunter's Moon shut down, so there hasn't been much to talk about anyway.) It ended up as a general clearinghouse for updates on the graphic novels, snippets of fiction, Kismet stories, art posts, the occasional fiction discussion when I get around to starting one, etc. It's also been mostly dead for the last year or so.

One of the reasons why it's been lying fallow is because, since I've been using it as more or less a personal blog, I've been frustrated by not being able to use all the blog features since it's technically a community. For example, you can't future-date entries, and you can't set entries to private (which is a feature I really LIKE, in case I have to lock down an entry but don't want to delete it and lose all the comments -- for example, if I post a story and then decide to try to sell it and need to remove it from the internet).

Because of the limitations on privacy features in a community, last fall for NaNoWriMo I created a second journal, icefallstudio, for posting fiction. This one is almost entirely friends-locked and, so far, the only thing I've posted there has been my NaNo novel. I was intending to post regular fiction updates, but apparently I suck at that.

Now that I've had a little break from Kismet and I'm getting back into non-fandom creative pursuits, I would like to start posting regular creative updates. I want to start drawing readers back into my creative worlds, and want to give them regular updates to look forward to. I just can't figure out how to break it up between the two journals. Here are all of the things that I would like to post somewhere:

- Updates on my projects (e.g. when is Kismet resuming, when is the new graphic novel coming out, etc)
- Short stories and snippets of works in progress
- Art and sketches and short comics
- Discussions of fiction and comics, like the "question of the week" that I was doing for a while at icefallpress

POSSIBILITY A:
Keep posting fiction under lock at icefallstudio, and post everything else (discussion, updates, art) at icefallpress, the community.

Pros: icefallstudio would be focused on a single topic (fiction). People could friend the community to keep up with my various projects, and only friend the other LJ if they were interested in the fiction too. Having most of the discussions at the community would make it easier to encourage other people to post there, making it more of a general art/comics/fiction discussion area if I want to go that route.
Cons: Potential for confusion is high, with two similarly-named LJs containing slightly different content for people to have to keep track of. Not to mention that I have to keep switching accounts in order to post, and have two different creative LJs to keep tagged and organized and updated. Kismet stuff would be divided up between the two LJs, since some of it is fiction and some is comics.

POSSIBILITY B:
Do away with the icefallpress community (well, not entirely, but let it continue to lie fallow until I need it again) and post everything at icefallstudio.
Pros: Only one place for people to friend in order to keep up with my projects. As it's a private LJ rather than a community, I have full control over all its features.
Cons: The community got cluttered quickly, when I was posting everything there. This would have the same problem -- it's tidy and well-organized now, but it'll be a mess in a year. Also, I'm not sure if I want to encourage EVERYONE to friend a locked fiction comm. And since it's not a community, I can't really "grow" it as a general discussion comm the way I wanted to. I'll have to switch accounts between that and "laylalawlor" every time I update either journal.

POSSIBILITY C:
The reverse of "B": abandon the fiction LJ and go back to posting everything at the community.
Pros: Only one place to friend. Can stay logged in as "laylalawlor" all the time.
Cons: I don't really want to post fiction at the comm because of the lack of control over posting features (even when I'm running the place) and, again, I want to keep the fiction a little bit separate from everything else, because it's the only thing I'm NOT self-publishing (at least as of now).

Right now I'm leaning towards option "A": locked fiction LJ (updated rarely), discussion/sketchblog community (updated frequently). I'm just a little worried that it'll be confusing for people to have two similar LJs with similar names.

Comments

[allanh.livejournal.com]

I'll friend 'em all, no matter what you decide.

Yes, I understand this doesn't make your decision any easier. I just figured you could use a smile on your face about now. :)

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

And it DID put a smile on my face! You're awesome, as always. :D

I think I'm just undergoing one of those temperamental artistic states, where I kind of flail around and dither over the choices and, in the end, settle down to whatever I was doing in the first place...

[allanh.livejournal.com]

[soothing voice] There, there ... it'll all be OK.

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

:runs in circles:

[naye]

I guess if you're mostly worried about having fiction up that might need to be taken down, and you don't want to lose the comments, you could always just edit the post? Since people who friend will (hopefully!) be understanding of your situation, changing a fiction post for a placeholder "this story has been removed for X reason/time, see [page] for more information on (the project, the reasons for removing it)" should work? Then you'll have the comments for the original story around, and if you ever want to re-post it you can edit it back in again? Granted, it's not as easy and non-cluttery as just making an entry private, but...?

Yeah, multiple blogs gets messy - and I haven't ever tried to split off creative stuff! (Though I did try to juggle one blog and three LJs all intended for different audiences for a year. It was - messy, yes.)

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

... oh hey, you're right, I could do that!

I don't know ... I just kinda prefer the idea of having a blog specifically devoted to the fiction. I do worry about dividing myself too thin, though. It gets pretty sad when I can't remember what I've posted where -- between this, the fan blog of which you're aware, the two creative blogs AND the communities where I post (under both my main pseudonyms) I think my head's about to explode.

[naye]

Yeah - as a reader, I can sort of keep track of multiple blogs, especially if they're all on LJ and I just friend them all, but I really do find it easier to have everything collected in one place.

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

Yeah ... I know several people who keep multiple accounts (usually to separate fandom and RL, or personal from professional) and while I can keep a few of them straight for people I know, it becomes just too much WORK after a while. I'm lazy ... I want it all at one place!

One of the main reasons why I changed this blog to my real name is because I'm starting to develop offline relationships with more people who know me under my fandom nom de plume (I think the only person who used to know me as both was Emilie) and I don't want to put them in the position of having to wonder who the heck I am every time I show up as "glacierdust". (And even in fandom I have two, come to think of it! I swear I didn't plan it this way -- it just happened!)

The multiple blogs and accounts all had reasons for their creation, and made sense at the time, but I'm starting to feel like I'm suffering from some sort of multiple personality disorder.

(Aaugh, I hate Daylight Savings Time! I really need to go to bed, but I'm not sleepy.)

[naye]

Heh. I did the separation of fandom/RL, and then I separated "on-line" RL from RL-RL, and in the end I'd really had enough of it. Especially since I actually switched username on LJ no less than three times before arriving at my current one. Even I started getting confused by that! *g* (Doesn't help that it's a handle used by other people on other sites! Sigh. I contemplated just using my real name, but for one it's rare enough that I get paranoid about people tracking me down based on it, and then it seems it's rather popular as a handle with people who have some completely different name in RL. Go figure.)

You're doing DST already? We don't switch over until the end of the month, these days. European Union regulations! (I hate DST, and when in Kyoto I was thrilled to discover that Japan doesn't do it at all, which is very sane and convenient.)

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

You're doing DST already? We don't switch over until the end of the month, these days.

Yeah, they changed it last year, so now it goes into effect a month earlier than it used to. Which makes no sense ... but neither does DST. (I swear, it's one of those things that if you had to try to explain it to aliens, you'd sound like a total raving loon ... oh hey! Does Atlantis use DST? I can't think how they might explain it to Ronon and Teyla other than "It's religious. Shut up." :D )

Anyway ... yeah ... it happens that I started out in all of my earliest experiences on the Internet using my real name, because I was mostly on writers' mailing lists and things of that nature, and I basically stuck with the habit for years. It's still more comfortable for me. At the very least, I need to cut down on the number of pseudonyms that I'm using. I wish I'd streamlined my fandom pseuds at the very start of my foray into SGA fandom. It would have been a good time to do it, too! But I didn't, and now there are a ton of people who know me by the one I want to change ... everybody who "met" me on ff.net, basically. :headdesk:

[parisntripfan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they changed it last year, so now it goes into effect a month earlier than it used to. Which makes no sense ... but neither does DST.

You know I am surprised that you have DST up there in Alaska. I mean I can sort of see the advantage here in the Lower 48 - although more so in the summer when people want to hike, go to the beach or other outdoor activities later in the evening. But up where you are? Heck even without DST in the summer isn't it light until like almost midnight?

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

DST in Alaska definitely makes even less sense than elsewhere, 'tis true. We don't even have the issue you have in the Lower '48 where it's confusing to cross state lines between states that do observe it and those few which don't -- because there are no other states around us. We really don't gain a thing from it. I have no idea why we bother with it.

In the part of the state where I grew up, we didn't really have the "light all night" thing going on, but Fairbanks is very close to the Arctic Circle, and in the middle of June we have about an hour or two in the middle of the night when the sun dips below the horizon in a tokenistic kind of way, but it doesn't actually get dark. So, yeah. No point. In fact, because of the way our time zones are set up, our "noon" is actually more like 2 p.m., so DST pushes it forward so that it isn't light yet when you get up, but stays light until about 8 p.m. in March, which is fairly pointless.

[tinpan.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I'm confused between all the different blogs. I just sort everything on my single journal under tags, and anything too sensitive gets friends-locked. It's not the perfec solution, but I'm too addle-brained to keep track of anything more complicated. Good luck with this!

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

I don't blame you. Hell, *I'm* confused!

I kinda wish I'd just started in the beginning using my main blog for all of those, because now I've got several and I don't want to abandon any of them, but I also don't want to drive people crazy.