trustflow

[lobelia321]

Inspired by brightest_blue, I tried that Trustflow meme, about the people not on my Friends List but who are 'closest' to me.

However, for me it was a bit useless as there is actually a reason why these people are not on my Friends List... And it's not because they are so closest.

Now, how do I find new Friends? The best tried and tested method, I find, is still the old Friends of Friends of clicking frenzy.

Comments

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

yes, I think your method is the best. I like the randomly-coming-across-people way. Recently, I've mainly been friending people who write great fic, and people who draw cool stuff.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I, too, have been friending people who write great fic (do share their names!) but I also get intimidated by these people who write great fic and almost wish for some who write good fun fic but not Great.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think all the people I friended are also the people you friended. And I know what you mean! I find myself veering closer and closer to lurkerville lately because these people are just so good and so popular, you know? And so prolific, and it's all good! Which makes me look at my pathetic couple of paragraphs and wonder why I bother to struggle. It seems a bit sad, because I never used to feel this way about writing, and about my writing in comparison with other fic-writers. Somewhere along the line, the angst took over from the fun.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Shelsie! Can we form some sort of mutual support company? Because I keep thinking, the writing should be fun! What is the point of the writing if it is not fun? So much in life is in the Notfun category; I chose the online life for its Fun quotient! I was so buoyed up by that little quickie fic I posted unbetaed the other day that I wrote another quickie fic yesterday and sent it to a beta. She found many flaws. I stared at the flaws and agreed with her and felt, as you say, that they were a bunch of pathetic paragraphs. I also want to learn, though, where I went wrong, and I cannot learn this from impartial beta remarks because I get too upset (although I try not to get upset because I asked for it, after all). But I'm trying to make the upset work for me. For example, I was thinking it could be a good strategy to release the angst by doing some writing exercises. Simply by labeling them writing exercises and not fic, one might bypass a certain angst quotient. I did some of these years ago, do you remember? Gacked from Raymond Queneau, Exercises in Style. He wrote the same scene in 70 different styles. I once copied that for a fic about blowjobs, do you remember? We could set each other a plot point to do, e.g. Person X gets on a bus (or a space ship or a film set trailer) -- I revise: Person X gets on a vehicle and notices Person Y wearing a yellow shawl. Or somesuch trivial event, you know what I mean. Then write it in the style of Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, Elijah phone txt, metaphor, litotes, precision, exclamations, rambling long sentences, sharp short sentences, adverbially, verbally (you get the drift). Some of the above are from Queneau.

Do you want to join me for mutual support? Or do you still need to be in knitting mode? Can we do this or will we just subside into non-posting guilt and torpor?

I find it's not so much writing that's bothering me at the moment but posting. Going public. I find a terrible need to go public. And then lick my wounds once I've gone public and am not a) getting 150 per cent approbation and b) 547 feedback comments within two hours.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I think this is a very excellent idea, actually. Writing exercises,I think, might be the way to go. You know I told you I was doing the Stephen Fry poetry book thing? I'm doing it rather sporadically, but that's helping. There have been days where I've thought about the fic I'm trying to write, and felt quite depressed and slighly sick about it, and then it's actually a relief to be told you've got forty minutes to write two stanzas in counted syllabic verse on the subject of hygiene.

I've not had a very good day today - I lapsed into lethargy and broodiness. I find myself in a bit of a tangle with regards to fic and fandom and LJ, and it's all a bit angstworthy. I know what you're saying about the posting angst, too. In the end it's all about our relationships with other people in fandom, I suppose, and that's probably what my problem is, too - it's not just the writing.

Arrrrgh! Big tangle in my head!!!

Ahem. But yes to the writing support group. Knitting is getting old. :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I did it! Did you see? I wrote some writing exercises. It was majorly therapeutic. I think it might be even better if somebody else told me what to do because one's own will, predilections and worries will creep in. So if somebody (not saying any names here) were to say 'Write this scene: X slices a cucumber' or 'Y knits a shawl' or 'X fucks Y' (you know, everyday banality) and then to stipulate 'one first person pov, pov of the cucumber', 'one telegram style', 'one metaphorical lyricism', 'one objective, descriptive' -- that would be good.

Anyway, if you want to write about John opening a door or about something else but in the style of a 19th C. novel, in one sentence et cetera -- that would also be so great!

I find that I need to post. I cannot do this in private or in email. The post could be flocked, but for me it works best if I expose myself. Because, yes, as you say, a lot of this stems from what cupidsbow (recced to me recently by brightest_blue) calls performance anxiety. So for me it is not solved by solitary writing. The therapy and the learning come from exposing myself. And so I thought, writing exercises are like a controlled exposure.

I'm telling you, it was fun to write, and it was also interesting to write because I remembered how I write, what comes easily to me, what comes very, very hardly (is that a diction?), and that's a first sort of self-diagnostic step, isn't it?

Do you think we should stick to a fandom, make it random, cycle through fandoms?

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I will endeavour to do the exercise! I may post them in comments to your post, as I seem to have developed a phobia about posting in my own journal.

I was going to say make it random, but then again, maybe the more rules the better? Rules and discipline! If I know I have to do SGA for this one, that'll stop me dithering (because I am already dithering, I am so dithery today!)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, the more rules the better, you are right! OK, SGA for this one.

And feel free to post in comments. I've done that; it's a good way to hide a little while still being public. Do you find this? Also, if it's in a Friend's journal, you feel sort of 'safe'.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, that's why I've been doing lots of commenting lately, but no posting. Except now I've just posted everything I've been meaning to say for the past month in one huge lump. Heh.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I meant to say - have you read cesperanza's latest post. I found it made me feel better about some writing-related things.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I have already saved Speranza's post to my hard disk, highlighted the best bits and am ready to print it out! It is balm for my writing soul! She seems like a really nice person. Do you know her well?

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Not at all, actually - I just friended her the other day. Because I've been pretty much mainlining her fic over the past week or so, just sort of gobbling down one or two a day. And I suppose if one will do that to oneself, one is bound to end up feeling somewhat inadequate... ;)

But anyway, that's why it was so nice that it was she who posted the thing that made me feel better.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I have been thinking about that Cesperanza post a lot! It has really helped to buoy me up and make me focus on what I want to do on LJ. Because I have often in the past thought, to post or not to post? And I'm now thinking, when that question comes up in the future, that I shall try to opt for 'post' always. Because it's about staying in the game! Hey, is that a new motivational icon?

So what Speranza fic did you specially like and want to specially rec? She herself mentions that Chicago one...? I have read Kowalski is bleeding and the Testament SGA one and something called MVP or MPV or somesuch.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

It was really great. What with that and the writing exercise, I'm feeling so much more positive about the whole writing thing. Play up, play up, and play the game! I feel like I'm in an early 20th Century girls' school story. Only with more men having sex.

Ooh recs. I'm so tempted to say, 'just read them all', but that's a copout. SGA: Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead is really lovely. (btw, you will notice that in a minute I go on and on about Due South ad nauseum, which will make this rec look kind of dismissive, which it's really not meant to be.)

But I've mainly been reading Due South. It's really become a full-blown obsession, I'm afraid. It has got to the stage where I'm buying obscure Canadian films in formats I can't watch off eBay because of the actors in them.I'd be a bit worried, but my obsessions tend to blow themselves out soon enough. Also, obsession is fun! But I digress.

I just read Chicago's Most Wanted last night, and it is indeed a fabulous, fabulous, lovely romp of a fic! It made me genuinely laugh out loud and the banter, oh the banter! Also, it contains this line: Sucking cock and robbing banks. Fraser just hadn't been the same since prison.

As if you could possibly resist.

Also, the following: Wildly Dangerous Ways, The Border Between Life and Death (there's this whole backstory of Ray and his ex-wife is heartbreaking and real and for me it is now 100% true and canon forever and ever amen so there), and About a Dog because omg the deaf wolf turned into a person!!!

And then read the rest.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Also.P.S. I have finally managed to post the HP opus beginning in a readable format. Sorry, at first it came out all wonky. Nerves...!! Feel free to read at your leisure. I am about to go to bed, anyway.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I have it opened it in a tab for later perusal.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Heh. I totally agree on the "trustflow" thing.

I look at the interesting commenters in friends' ljs, and go read their ljs to see if they look interesting.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, the friends-friends-friends path, and by the end of it you're so lost you can't remember where you started out! *g* I haven't added new people in a bit, or only added people for their fic, but I suddenly feel the urge to go cruising a bit. :-) I think that trustflow thing measures maybe people who have your friends in common or somesuch. So it finds people who used to be on your Friends List but aren't any more and guess what, duh, they're not there because they were Defriended for a reason. So those people would be the last ones to be 'close'.

[sonicbookmark.livejournal.com]

I'll be your friend!

But you might not want to be mine...all I'm really good for is picspam. And crack!fic. But it might make you laugh. :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*laughs very loudly*

How can I resist? Also, how can I resist that icon?

Re your title Dickless Dick or Joe: Shouldn't it, technically speaking, be Dickless Rod?

*guffaws helplessly*

[sonicbookmark.livejournal.com]

You cannot resist the icon, it's impossible. It's John for goodness sake.

I never thought of Dickless Rod!!! But it sounds kinda mean. Then again, the whole fic was kinda mean so it would fit perfectly.

I love your icon!!! Was that a coincidence or on purpose?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

'I am a girl' icon was made in response to my virginal watching of 'Duet' about 2 1/2 weeks ago, *g*. And then seemed perfectly apposite for your fic, of course. *gg*

I can't get that line 'dickless rod' out of my head now. Those guys have such double-innuendoable names! I never knew!!

*smites you with another icon*

*on second thoughts, doesn't smite because is not logged in and does not have access to icony goodness* :-)