Heya,

I have wondered whether or not I should bother perhaps setting up a fanfiction blog for the fandoms I write in. I have seen authors use facebook, livejournal, and tumblr for this, although they post art and other stuff to tumblr blogs too.

Does anyone else do this too?

Is it worth the time and effort?

Note I am not a social media hound.

I'm the person that txts with one finger on the phone, typing in a letter at a time because I hate those little buttons.

Keyboards are so much easier!

~ Pyre

I love Tumblr.

Why? Because I have found a fabulous group of people who have similar interests. Within that group, we are artists, writers, bloggers and lurkers. We share our writing and our arts and support one another by 'liking' and/or reblogging to share with others.

One warning: You might become addicted. It's just so easy to find new blogs that you like and follow and I've found, as well as others, that it can take up a lot of your time IF you let it.

I can’t vouch for Facebook since I’ve never had an account there.

I used livejournal for years and it was nice, though these days it feels deserted, because so many people have left it over the years and prefer using other blogging platforms nowadays. So if you want to reach a lot of people it might not be ideal.

I'm a big fan of tumblr and have a blog there and post my fics (drabbles/oneshots) there too.

The thing about tumblr is that it's very versatile, you can make it anything you want to be. And not just your own blog but your dashboard too. Your dashboard will only show posts from blogs you follow, so really it can be anything you want. (For me it's art and books and pictures about nature and architecture. It's inspiring quotes and writing advice and fandom stuff. So like I said, anything.)
There are many themes from which you can choose a suitable one for your blog and you can even customise them further with CSS it that's up your alley.

On tumblr you have one main blog. The url of your main blog acts much like your default username. It will show to people when you follow them, when you like a post, when you submit to another blog, or when you send someone a message (called “ask”).
But you can also have sideblogs. They’re not necessary as you can certainly get by with a main blog alone, but sideblogs can be convenient if you want a blog that is private (as they can be password protected), or if you want to have blogs that have different themes (e.g. separate blogs for different fandoms).

Also worth mentioning is that there is a browser extension for tumblr called xkit, where you can choose to install different apps to make using tumblr more convenient and give you options you wouldn’t normally get like mass-editing posts on your blog, blacklisting certain types of posts or selecting to see the tags people have added to reblogged posts (which is nice for example if someone has made comments about your post in the tags).

It can be a hassle and a timesink.
Whether it is worth the time and effort, I don't know, I think that's something only you can answer, since it also depends on what you want from your blog.

I just know I've certainly enjoyed my time there and it's allowed me to take part in things I might have otherwise missed out on, like the SessKag week they hosted in August. Also one of the fandoms I write for is much more active on tumblr than it is on either ff.net or AO3.

If you're interested or have any questions or confusion about either tumblr or livejournal, feel free to ask.

XD Thanks Aijo. Thanks Chie.

Hmm now that's food for thought.

I have thought about blogging, although I'd be lazy about updating the thing.

Hmm, I might check it out on a whim eventually. XD.

It does look mighty interesting, especially the options and apps-side. XD.

Something to think about.

Thanks again.

~ Pyre

You're welcome!

I completely understand about the lazy updating. I went through periods of radio silence on LJ. I was sporadic on tumblr in the beginning, too, but I've got better since I actually got some followers. Gives you more motivation to update when you know people are actually reading what you're babbling about.

Tumblr is a bit better in that sense, I suppose, since you can reblog posts from other blogs, so your blog can have new content without you having to make a post yourself. And also worth mentioning is that both on LJ and Tumblr you can schedule your posts to automagically be posted at a certain time, so you could write one now and only have it show up on your blog three days later.
Tumblr also has a queue function which I believe a lot of prolific people take advantage of to ensure daily updates. (I have no personal experience with the queue function though, as I've never been one for daily updates.)