In which I fret about a master post.
Apr. 17th, 2009 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rsadelleYou know how I always have to fret about things before doing them? This is that kind of post.
So here's the thing: I've written a lot of fic. A lot. I've used the "fic by me" tag 181 times. Only a small handful of those things are fic announcements for things that I posted to my site, which has a large number of other stories. When I tagged everything, I tried to make the tags make sense and make everything easy to find. But they're not really that easy to parse if you're not me and you're looking for fic. (Is there a way to do and [not or] combinations of tags on LJ the way you can on delicious?) I've been thinking I should do what other writers have done and make some sort of master post. Three things for me to fret about:
First of all, do I futuredate my master post so it shows up at the top of my LJ; or do I just post it, edit when appropriate, and put a link to it in my sidebar? Making it more or less sticky seems to be the general custom, so people might be more likely to see it there. On the other hand, I have my LJ address listed as my website all over the place (namely, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter), and I don't think I want a master post to be the first thing the generic person sees. Making this more of an issue is that I wouldn't be surprised if I need to break it up into two posts (FPF and RPF, maybe) due to length.
Secondly, all the fic on my website. Egads, all that fic. I'm a completist so it has to be linked, too. In some ways, this makes a master list easier; I can start with the fic indexes on my website. But here's the extra dilemma about that: I've been considering moving everything from my website to LJ/other places and getting rid of my website. My hosting renews at the beginning of April, so I have just under a year to decide if I want to do this. I actually have no problems with moving all my fic/book lists/pictures elsewhere. It's changing my email address that I don't want to deal with. Maybe I'll play with Gmail and see how it works with SeaMonkey.
Thirdly, I'm trying to figure out if I should also tag all my fic on delicious while I'm at it. (My delicious bookmarks - so far mostly pictures and things I suspect I'll want to find again but won't know how.) myfic seems to be a relatively popular tag. A few of my things are already tagged with author:rsadelle, which I suppose I could use. (And I suppose I will have to get used to fandom on LJ and resign myself to being rsadelle instead of Ruth Sadelle Alderson. Don't think I haven't noticed the irony of the situation where I'm considering moving everything from an old-school website to LJ as the rest of fandom seems to be considering moving from LJ to Dreamwidth.) I like the idea of tagging on delicious if for no other reason than potential readers.
Any thoughts or advice?
So here's the thing: I've written a lot of fic. A lot. I've used the "fic by me" tag 181 times. Only a small handful of those things are fic announcements for things that I posted to my site, which has a large number of other stories. When I tagged everything, I tried to make the tags make sense and make everything easy to find. But they're not really that easy to parse if you're not me and you're looking for fic. (Is there a way to do and [not or] combinations of tags on LJ the way you can on delicious?) I've been thinking I should do what other writers have done and make some sort of master post. Three things for me to fret about:
First of all, do I futuredate my master post so it shows up at the top of my LJ; or do I just post it, edit when appropriate, and put a link to it in my sidebar? Making it more or less sticky seems to be the general custom, so people might be more likely to see it there. On the other hand, I have my LJ address listed as my website all over the place (namely, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter), and I don't think I want a master post to be the first thing the generic person sees. Making this more of an issue is that I wouldn't be surprised if I need to break it up into two posts (FPF and RPF, maybe) due to length.
Secondly, all the fic on my website. Egads, all that fic. I'm a completist so it has to be linked, too. In some ways, this makes a master list easier; I can start with the fic indexes on my website. But here's the extra dilemma about that: I've been considering moving everything from my website to LJ/other places and getting rid of my website. My hosting renews at the beginning of April, so I have just under a year to decide if I want to do this. I actually have no problems with moving all my fic/book lists/pictures elsewhere. It's changing my email address that I don't want to deal with. Maybe I'll play with Gmail and see how it works with SeaMonkey.
Thirdly, I'm trying to figure out if I should also tag all my fic on delicious while I'm at it. (My delicious bookmarks - so far mostly pictures and things I suspect I'll want to find again but won't know how.) myfic seems to be a relatively popular tag. A few of my things are already tagged with author:rsadelle, which I suppose I could use. (And I suppose I will have to get used to fandom on LJ and resign myself to being rsadelle instead of Ruth Sadelle Alderson. Don't think I haven't noticed the irony of the situation where I'm considering moving everything from an old-school website to LJ as the rest of fandom seems to be considering moving from LJ to Dreamwidth.) I like the idea of tagging on delicious if for no other reason than potential readers.
Any thoughts or advice?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-17 09:11 pm (UTC)One argument for moving to Dreamwidth, btw, is that you are apparently going to be able to next tags--so you could, for example, have a general tag for Chris fic, under which as subheadings you could have Chris/Dave or Chris/Steve. You can't do that with LJ.
If you're looking on votes on getting rid of your website, btw, my vote is no. If all your fic was only on LJ, what would happen if LJ were to one day go down the way GJ did? (Not that I'm predicting that would happen soo, of course).
And I think you should be able to tag your fic on delicious with your preferred name! Though I can also see the case for using rsadelle, if that's how most of your readers are thinking of you.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-17 09:34 pm (UTC)I can only imagine trying to wrangle my tags into nested tags. It was hard enough to make tags as is! Also, I'm not sure I've tagged things in a way that makes it easy to do this. Hmm.
I do have everything on my hard drive, so if LJ disappears, I would be able to repost my fic somewhere. (And, really, the newest things I posted to my website were in December 2007, so everything more recent is on LJ anyway, and the really old things are sometimes on other fic archives too.)
I actually wonder if it's worth tagging as author:[whatever] anyway - does anyone ever look for that unless they're vanity deliciousing themselves? At least with myfic, I could just point people to my use of that tag.