Green Room - Week 28 - Day 7

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I was starting to write today's Green Room when I noticed that I had a message in my LJ inbox.

After some of the messages I've been receiving lately, I was a bit on the "Oh no, what's going on NOW" about it. But I decided to check it out first.

You know, just in case it was something that wanted to address.

As it turns out - it was.

But not in the way I was fearing.

It was from someone who had found their way to Idol, and back to Livejournal in general, via a friend's suggestion that she check out the quality of writing and the community we have here.

It's one thing to *know* and be able to see it happening, over the course of weeks. But those emails always manage to make my day better.

So keep up the good work everyone!

***
Speaking of "keeping up the good work" - there is a poll happening right now! http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/806700.html

It closes *tonight* and based on the vote totals from the past couple of weeks vs what have been cast so far, and factoring in how many people usually wait until the last day to cast their final ballots - there is currently *no one* who is "safe". (a couple "unlikely" but still within that average vote margin)

Which means that if there is someone who has written something you want people to check out - now is the time to tell them about it! Make the case for why folks need to read this (or re-read it) NOW!

Comments

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

Poor Gary. Shenanigans have begun, haven't they? ;)

Still kind of avoiding looking at the poll. Kind of.

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I said this in yesterday's post, but I'll repeat myself here.

The situation is: People are only voting for their friend.

It's not a new situation. It's not an unexpected situation.

It's a situation that has come up every season, and every season there are checks and balances to keep it from getting too far out of hand.

But there are people who are upset by this happening and they are expressing themselves. Which is good.

Which means it is time for reminders to folks of "Hey, I know you can't really make people sit down and read other people's work - but make an effort to reminder them that they should *for their own benefit, and yours".

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, okay.

And really, I don't expect any different, when I ask my flist for votes -- though I generally haven't pimped myself, all season. And I very much am willing to just be like HEY GUYS READ THIS AWESOME STUFF MY FRIENDS ARE GENERATING IN THIS COMPETITION.

Like I did on tumblr the other day. :3 Though I don't think anyone clicked the link, hah. I'm still easing back into being active on some of my other social media sites. =p LJ and facebook gets most of my attention.

[lrig-rorrim.livejournal.com]

Pretty much that's all you can do. You can make the message as varied and targeted as possible - I include a list of names of people whose work I consistently enjoy each week when I send out my little "I wrote another story, yay" email, and if I've had time to read ahead I'll often include a link to a specific thing I think those folks will enjoy, but you can't control what other people are going to do. You can only make it so that it's easy for them to do the right thing, and impress on them that it's more interesting and fun for them, probably, to go and read even a random sampling of stuff so they can see other perspectives on the prompts in a given week. Just clicking on a clicky box next to a name you know is an easy way to show support, but it's not very engaging, unfortunately. :/

[medleymisty.livejournal.com]

I do read everyone, but I will admit that I tend to vote for my friends.

In my case though - I make friends with people whose writing I like. So over time that becomes usually voting for my friends, but it started as voting for people whose writing I liked the most.

I am quite willing to vote for people who I'm not friends with yet if I find I like their writing, and then over time I will make them my friend too. :)