I have a question.
I make longer posts both here and on my LiveJournal. The nature of the posts are slightly different.
(I didn’t say it was going to be a short question, did I? >.>)
I’ve been posting on LJ for a number of years. I didn’t actually start the LJ posts to be an author-online; I started them because they seemed like an almost natural offshoot of a prior BBS on which I socialized with people who were otherwise halfway across the planet.
However…when being social, acts of egregious self-promotion All The Time aren’t conducive to conversation and interaction, and there’s always pressure to be promoting and to raise awareness. This was tricky for me, because I’m well aware that people who are interested in what I have to say or think in general don’t actually need to be told constantly what my publication schedule is like, what I’ve just sold, or what’s just arrived in bookstores. Nor are they always my readers, so answering questions about what I’m writing, in detail, or what I’ve written, in detail, sometimes made me feel self-conscious.
On the other hand? Not answering questions when readers did find my LJ and were interested in my books, seemed graceless and kind of counter-intuitive. So I tried to find a balance.
Talking about the writing process is general enough, and on LJ, common enough, that it’s part of the general conversation; I felt, and feel, no self-consciousness about that, and I would often combine some of both — specific questions and more general observations. This is in part what the internet does – one person will pose a question or make a comment, and others will respond to it (often, in my case, at length) as a sort of extended conversational gambit.
When I started the wordpress site (at which this is being posted), I thought I could use it to post book-related news — release dates, covers, interviews — that were much more about what I do than what I think. They could be about the promotion, and about the books themselves, and I would feel much less self-conscious about it because the people who were only interested in the posts about the books I write would be able to find that information easily.
And that’s worked out, and I think it’s worked relatively well. The only thing I feel a little bad for is the lack of an LJ style cut-tag, but hopefully that’s less of an issue.
You’re probably wondering what the question is at this point, or are at least becoming concerned that I’ve become so mired in the background that I’ve forgotten it. So: the question is:
Are you happy with what’s posted here as it currently stands, or would you like me to post a link (or even cross-post) to the LJ posts when I do write them?
I ask this because I was writing an LJ post about something Sherwood Smith wrote here, and I realized I was about to point out which of my own books or stories were informed, for me, by what she calls ‘white fire’ writing.
I thought it might be of interest to people who read here, and then, well. Question paralysis.
sascha 
Estara 
Genna Warner 
Michael 
DG 
Marcy 
Elvet 
Aaron 
Lyssabits 
Carol Duffy 
Hilda 
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Hey, it was an open question, so do talk about it at the Book View site!