I am curious (purple)

[gwyn]

One of the things that the past couple weeks or so brought home to me is that I'm completely bewildered by why anyone reads this LJ. I know most of my flist comes from the Jossverse -- especially Buffy fans. Judging by the response to last week's new chapter of my F&F WIP, it's not for the F&F fic updates. Many of you are folks I know through fandom, especially vidding. And then there's the inevitable confusion over why I get both massively defriended after a usage post, but also friended by a lot of new people, and many of them haven't been shy about telling me it's boring if I don't do more usage posts. At this point I almost have no idea what to use it for anymore. I would actually be grateful if you'd do the ticky box thing, and let me know, so I can figure out what to focus on. As it is, with fic, I'm trying to put the focus back in the Buffy since I think there's clearly more interest there, but is there something else I should be wasting words on?

[Poll #372466]

Comments

[hobbituk.livejournal.com]

Honestly? I have no idea why I friended you originally... I suspect I landed on your LJ via a friends flist, or a fic rec, or some such thing. Then, what I usually do is if I like what I read, I friend the LJ so I can read more. You are still friended, so I must like it!! *smiles and waves*

One thing, though. I feel completely ignorant and out of the loop and it is driving me mad. Just what is a usage post??? Should I be doing them? *has a thought* DO I do them already???

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

The usage posts are what most people call the grammar posts, even though they're rarely about grammar, per se, or even syntax. I used to do them about once a week or so, but now I do them sporadically because sometimes they're just hard work, sometimes they're frustrating, and sometimes I just don't want to! You can find them in my memories section, or if you access my main LJ page, they're listed in the links box under Usage and Writing Posts.

Basically, they came out of my talking sometimes about my job and from people I'd beta edited, and they wanted to know about some of the things I commented on such as serial commas or why till is totally correct (instead of 'til) and so on. I try to use fannish things as examples for how to do things, and blow up myths about what's correct and not. Fannish stuff seems to help get the points across, I think.

[hobbituk.livejournal.com]

Oh, bless you! Thank you so much for explaining that - everyone else seemed to know what you meant...

I will go to your memories and check them out now. My own grammar tends to be of the unconsciously absorbed type - a bit of factual information can only be of the good!