Z's right. Toko, what you should think about is how writing, in and of itself, makes you feel (after all, you wouldn't be bothering if you didn't enjoy doing it, right?) . . . and what the reviews- the big ones that really mean something when you're through reading them- are saying (if your concern is that your work is not truly enjoyable to readers). And I don't mean the 'please update soon' reviews- always nice to read, sure, but they don't tell you anything. You can have 200 reviews all asking you to update and it somehow doesn't measure to having just 10 that are from readers taking the time out to share with you what it is they're enjoying about your story, or how 'this' scene or 'that' incident made them feel. And as for the ones that say 'please update soon' . . . they wouldn't bother saying anything at all if they didn't want to see you continue (>.> although, this doesn't count for the lurkers, the readers who simply will not review no matter how much the adore a story .. . le sigh).

And . . . yeah, 2,000 reviews is not a pittance, even on ff.net.

Yeah that is another thing. Does that many reviews actually matter when 19 out of 20 are update now?

but... (I don't think I'm being that hard on myself since I throw out a negative and cancel it out with a positive CUPS OF WATER ALL AROUND)

Now with ff.net having traffic stats (wish they didn't because I keep obsessing over them every time I upload a new chapter) when you compare the amount of hits/visitors to reviews I take it as "They must have really liked it to take the time to post something so I just assume they aren't the critiquing type"

With my outlines and plans and an eager to get back to writing I have a feeling I'll come back into the fanfiction community with little problems

but I did have to go to dictionary.com to look up what pittance means @_@

>.< sorry, my mother's been a teacher since I was 10 years old, so I've had vocabulary drilled into my head, lol.

What I meant was that you should be valuing the content of the reviews as much as you're worrying about the numbers- and that if you have 20 reviews, maybe nineteen of them are people saying 'update now' . . . but that's 19 readers that enjoyed your work enough to ask you for more. And don't always take it as 'it's only saying update now', some people simply enjoy the story for what it is; not everyone is a constructive thinker who's going to share their thoughts with you simply because they don't, personally, have any input on the story. Sometimes it's that they feel they have nothing useful to contribute, and so only let you know that they want the story to go on.

This is much the same reason that some people read a book and go, 'that was good', put it down and that's it, they don't think of it again, while another person will read this very same book, declare it the most spectacular thing they've ever read and get on everyone they've ever met to read it, too. And then they obsess and start writing fanfics about it, lol.

Truthfully? None of them matter.

I know, it's not easy to accept that. Reviews are fun to get and they are like an addiction - you find yourself refreshing the stats page and your inbox, waiting for that one reader who will reassure you as to why you do it all. I think we've all been there at some point or another.

The fact of the matter is that authors of published novels do not receive this kind of instant gratification. We must realize that we are fortunate to get what we do and not lose focus of the real heart of what writing is. When we write we are sharing a part of ourselves with the world and when we get reviews it is as if we are getting a little something from a reader that says they approve of that part we have just shared.

We have to separate the part of us what wants that acceptance from why we start to write to begin with and keep that focus - otherwise we may never find our way back to it. Too often there have been writers who become so consumed with reviews and what that might mean for them as a writer that they lose focus and eventually their quality of work suffers. I believe this is likely because those writers have become so consumed with the instant gratification of reviews that they have forgotten what they started writing for.

So, to me, the logical answer is that none of them really matter.

We started writing without expecting to get reviews. We should continue without expecting them, too. If you get them it only shows that you have moved people to comment, no small feat in fanfiction - particularly these days.

This is very true. But reviews can be really helpful and bolstering when you're starting out, or when you're not as confident in your writing as you perhaps should be. Now, no, this is not to say that anyone should allow themselves to become dependent upon receiving reviews- seeing as we will inevitably write something that people just aren't going to like- or that we should allow reviews to influence our work, but people do tend to count reviews toward how good their story is. That being said, it's less of a task to expect people to take particular, helpful, things away from the feedback they're receiving, then to expect them to be able to let go of caring about reviews altogether.

Personally, I know I got into fanfiction writing because I wanted to hone my literary skills, but was shy about sharing my work with people that actually knew me. Fanfiction writing seemed like the perfect venue- I could put my work, my style of writing, out there and anonymously receive feedback. I was of a mind that sure, there might be people out there that talked s#!+, but for the most part, anonymity makes people feel comfortable to be honest. I'd been writing for a long time before that, but it wasn't until I started posting work online and getting genuine thoughts on said work that I really became comfortable with myself as a writer. This isn't to say I wouldn't still be writing today if it wasn't for this, but I do know that those early-day reviews did mean a lot at the time, in fact, yes, some of them still do.

I don't write for reviews, I write what I feel and what I want to see brought to life, but I won't lie, it does still feel good to find that other people are enjoying reading the words as much as I enjoyed writing them. Would I stop writing tomorrow if I stopped getting reviews? Absolutely not, but I can't say I'd be as confident in my abilities as a writer today if I hadn't had the help of other people who shared with me what they thought of my work.

I update almost every week-two weeks and I STILL have to go back to make sure what I'm doing is on tract with what I had already written!

It's a curse >.>

-MissKatt