alexandraerin

So, my post about how too much self-reflection can paralyze you in a fashion similar to analysis paralysis is going nowhere (the God of Irony wants me to think this is my punishment for offending it, but that's actually going to be something worse, later) but there have been a lot of good ideas on the "Work In Progress" post.

A lot of the collaborative/document-sharing ideas are good, but they don't quite appeal to me. I think I'd rather stick with a blog format: something I know, something easy to use, something I can write in the same format (HTML) that the finished story will be in and have the results render correctly, something with comments built in.

Someone suggested I just do it here, and I think that's a good idea, especially to begin with. Why invest a lot of time and resources (or any) into this little experiment when I could do it right here where I'm comfortable?

By making a tag for the Works In Progress (and maybe individual tags for individual stories, like WIP: Tales Of MU) I can let readers bookmark/subscribe to just those posts if that's all they care to read. Regular readers of my LJ who are interested don't have to check anywhere else. And LJ readers who don't want to see things that aren't finished can read the spoiler warning and skip it.

And there's a comment system that accepts logins from just about anywhere these days.

I was surprised at the number of people who suggested I leave the comments hidden, but I'd rather those comments come in a vacuum than play off each other. And if I stop to reply to the comments (which I can't do while they're hidden), I'll never get anywhere... the whole point of the thing will fall apart.

The other plus: I never manage to keep a backlog of finished things for very long because it doesn't create the sort of motivation my brain actually responds to. Writing things and not sharing them immediately doesn't give me any kind of "kick", and knowing there's a backlog makes me feel too comfortable. So now I can work on a backlog, but in public.

So... yeah. I think I've got my plan here. If this works out well enough, I might move it somewhere more dedicated later. But for now, this is the plan.