I am the worst at updating fanfiction (BUT I NEVER GIVE UP!)

My fanfics literally have big time gaps between updates (years, which is kind of fun because you can see how different my writing is) and even though it is great that I keep them in the back of my mind and do work on updates when I feel the need to this has brought up a problem with me.

I don't know if anyone else does this, but before I can even start writing the next chapter I have to go back and read the whole fanfic so I can keep little things in mind.

Does Sesshoumaru have two arms in this fic?

Exactly what am I doing with Kagome in this fic? Is she her bold self or in a moment of being vunerable?

What Inuyasha characters have I not used in this universe?

I was just rereading one of my fics and I loved it, and it totally deserves to be finished, but....

I completely forgot the plot

I knew the ending, I knew what the characters would go through all in my head when I posted the fic a year ago, and now when rereading it I was just as surprised when events happened.

I'm 22 and I am losing my mind >.>

I know the solution for this is going to be

"Hey Tamasha why don't you actually take notes for you to refer back to?"

I have 3 folders labeled fanfiction and they are all plots to stuff I've never even written so clearly I've attempted at one time @_@

I just wonder if anyone else has ever had this problem and overcame it. Having a plot in mind, losing track of that plot, can they save their fic? Can they take the little plot devices established by the already published works and keep it going with something new?

Also does anyone else have this disease where they can't even finish the fanfics they have, but yet they continue to make more fanfics?

I have all these plots but I'm too selfish to share them in the challenges section

Maybe I can help to make you feel a little better.

I forget plots that I am actively writing! I've probably forgotten Rendezvous four or five times now! Or I've gone "Didn't I have some other fic I was working on, too?" and have to go back to find them!

It doesn't seem to matter how long I update between or how complex my 'notes' are - to the point where I just stopped taking them. It doesn't matter how much I love the plot or how complex or simple it is. None of that matters.

I think, the problem is that to write you have to essentially be in the world you are writing. Then you have your actual life in the real world - school, jobs, family, etc... and all of this gets in the way of being in that story and in that moment. So when we start out it is easy to be in the story and stay in touch with the plot but after a while, it can be difficult as other things get in the way.

I wouldn't feel too bad about forgetting where you are going with things. It happens to everyone!

Errgggg what if I actually forgot the main plot? My plots aren't well thought out, they usually come to me when I'm walking or taking a shower, I write the first chapter or a few, and then I completely forget what came to me.

I just got bitten by another plot bunny and I'm making an outline right of everything I know I want to happen, but with my luck I'll get a virus on my computer or something and lose it. I need to start backing stuff up.

Seriously? My main plots are usually less than two sentences long. I only write down ones that I know I don't have the time to write at the moment.

One thing you can do, if you are that worried about losing your files on your computer, is start keeping a writing journal. Get yourself a cheap spiral notebook and start writing down your ideas as they come to you in the journal. If you feel the urge to write a whole scene or create a character you can do that in the journal. Then, when you are ready to write you can just pull things from your journal. (Just be sure to mark what you have used where!)

Another thing you can do, particularly for older works that you enjoy and feel you should continue, is to create a whole new plot. Read what you have and then rework your plot from there. Your readers are unlikely to know the difference unless you told some of them what you were planning to begin with. I have done this many times, actually.

Life gets in the way and sometimes we aren't the best at remembering all those little details that go into a story.

lol- you're definitely not the only one afflicted with that 'disease'. I have 10 fics on Dokuga- 2 are one-shots, so by their nature they were complete once they were posted, 2 I'm working on currently (one of which I'm desperately struggling to bring to a close soon) and that leaves the other 6 . . . which are all on hiatus.

Two of these stories are simply reposts from when I first came into the SessKag fandom 3-ish years ago, and during that time . . . I also was in the middle of writing 5 Naruto fics (1 KakaSaku, 3 NejiSaku and 1 that, even in it's early stage was shaping up to be a NejiSakuSasu love triangle), 2 Xiaolin Showdown fics and was outlining something for Avatar: The Last Airbender (I'm a hardcore Zutara supporter). . . . Not a single one of those fics has been finished . . . or even gotten anywhere close to completion and the Zutara fic never got past the intro chapter.

I kept telling myself that I needed to focus on something else, that my creative mind was too divided, so I took a break from fanfiction to focus on writing original fiction . . . sure enough, I get a few chapters into the first story, start going 'huh, if I spin this correctly, I can pull in all the paranormal story ideas I've been wanting to do over the years and make it a series'. Which turned out to be a mistake, because while I now have a basic outline for each book in the series, it's taken me 3 years to write 23 chapters on that first book and I have some stories in it that are only a chapter or two and haven't been touched in about 2 years aside from minor edits. On top of that, I have a story collection (so called because it's a place to put largely unrelated works that only have a few similarities, like location, that sort of thing).

I'm still toiling away at the original works (Can't get 'em published if I don't finish 'em *sweat drop*), but, to this day, I have yet to finish a story I've started. I'm finally close now, but I'm still not there yet. Like, there are readers that see my name and are afraid to read stuff attached to it 'cause they know they'll find themselves left off in the middle of something.

I don't think there's really a cure for 'completely' forgetting a plot. I used to do the same thing as you- when prepping to update a particular fic, I would go back and reread the entire thing (usually posted on ff.net or here, so I can see it the way a reader would, as opposed to reading it from my word docs) or, if pressed for time, I would at least reread the most recent chapter as kind of a refresher. I do know that sometimes I'll forget where I wanted a particular chapter to go and once I decide to plow through that and write whatever comes out instead, that it's either during the writing, or while rereading what I've written that I'll go 'Wait, didn't I want this to happen?' or 'Wasn't that supposed to have happened by now?' "Didn't I want to introduce such-and-such character here?' And I'm not big on pre-planning plots, either, my biggest fic so far just hit chapter 34, but when I'd first started writing it, I had only a partially formed idea based on some very basic concepts I wanted to incorportate, nothing more and didn't think that it would be any longer than 10 chapters if I even got to finish it.

What I'm saying is, perhaps go about your normal process- reread your chosen unfinished fic- and rather than pushing yourself to remember the idea you originally had, see if it sparks a fresh idea. It may turn out that as you're writing the new idea, you'll remember the old one, and then it's up to you to decide if you want to back-burner the new idea for a future fic and go with the older idea, keep going with the new idea, or find a way to mesh the two.

Anyways, I apologize for my rambling, just know that I completely understand where you're coming from and how frustrating it can be. Best of luck with your work.

zandrellia wrote:


Seriously? My main plots are usually less than two sentences long. I only write down ones that I know I don't have the time to write at the moment.

One thing you can do, if you are that worried about losing your files on your computer, is start keeping a writing journal. Get yourself a cheap spiral notebook and start writing down your ideas as they come to you in the journal. If you feel the urge to write a whole scene or create a character you can do that in the journal. Then, when you are ready to write you can just pull things from your journal. (Just be sure to mark what you have used where!)

Another thing you can do, particularly for older works that you enjoy and feel you should continue, is to create a whole new plot. Read what you have and then rework your plot from there. Your readers are unlikely to know the difference unless you told some of them what you were planning to begin with. I have done this many times, actually.

Life gets in the way and sometimes we aren't the best at remembering all those little details that go into a story.

Hah I did that . . . had that journal for 2 years, even got those colored post it tabs so I could easily turn to the next section, or back to 'this' idea to add something. Have no idea where that book is now- But, but, writing the basic ideas and character concepts and such out did help to imprint the ideas so even though half those ideas came to me a decade ago, I remember them now, even if I made no attempt to write this or that particular story.

Lolz once again I have a full folder full of plots and descriptions and outlines

just as luck would have it nothing about the fanfics that I actually want to update are in there D:<

This surprises me because I always use to write my fics on paper first (because I was in class and I could do this when the teacher told us to take notes and they'd never know) that way I could correct my grammar mistakes or add things as I typed rather than proof read afterwards.

Btw on the subject of original fiction I have all this plot and stuff written down for my story, characters figured out, etc. etc. It's been two years and I only got one chapter done XD

Fanfiction is an addiction when it comes to writing. I do more alternate universe than canon so I could have easily used a lot of my plots for original work but to keep my muse going I need reviews to help me get better, you always get more reviews doing fanfiction because of fan service, shipping, and just characters you already know.

TamashaToko wrote:

Fanfiction is an addiction when it comes to writing. I do more alternate universe than canon so I could have easily used a lot of my plots for original work but to keep my muse going I need reviews to help me get better, you always get more reviews doing fanfiction because of fan service, shipping, and just characters you already know.

So true . . . it's like pulling teeth to get even a qtr of the reviews on the original fiction sites that you get for fanfictions.

And the bulk of my fanfiction stories are AU, also. I don't work my pre-existing original fiction plots into my fanfictions (but I think that's mostly because I've already started writing out my original fictions and it would be too much work to go back and rework the detail-point to adapt it to Fanfiction characters, instead . . . and it's not like I haven't thought about doing that for the sake of receiving decent feedback), but in writing AU, I've managed to write a story that, when completed, I'll be overhaul-revising to make it into an original fiction piece

I have sort of the same problem but mine is kind of really weird...

I have noticed that if I am extremely emotionally like either really depressed or really angry, I can write and usually churn out a nice plot line for a story but it's never finished.
The stories I have up now I am not happy with and I am honestly thinking about taking them down to re-work every single last one but I already know if I do that I would probably never get around to working on them.

lol my mind get's pulled into so many different directions that I usually can not stay on a plot line for too long and it may be over six months before I think of it again or longer.

first off, create an general outline. That way if you are one of those authors thats has long gaps between updates, you know where you were going with the story.

second, after each chapter you post, directly go in and outline the next chapter, even if you don't write it out. That will make your jumping off point when you do finally get back to update, far less daunting.

third, keep rereading your story. You should do this if you update every year or every week. Even when you write every week there are minor details that you forget, which could use a closer focus in later chapters. It keeps things from being forgotten and unfinished. And you never know when a minor detail can bloom into a wonderful literary device later.

forth, keep doing what you are doing and "NEVER GIVE UP" !

TamashaToko wrote:

Btw on the subject of original fiction I have all this plot and stuff written down for my story, characters figured out, etc. etc. It's been two years and I only got one chapter done XD

I hear you too well in this regard... Seriously, I've had this original story project. The plot is still blotchy (but I always walk the plot out to a degree on the spot, as I go along with the story...) and the characters have been all ready and waltzing in my head... For some 7-8 bloody years. And I don't even have the first chapter done! I have started to write the story three times, and three times I have got stuck, re-read it months later and decided all I had written was crap... So now I'm practising my skills while bidding my time, till I feel ready to move onto the original ones.

OK, from someone that's done this for years I can give a bit of advice but I doubt anyone is going to like it...

From what you, and several others here are describing, it very much sounds like your overloading yourself with things. Once you do that, things go haywire and you lessen the chances of ever getting anything done, no matter how good your intentions.

The first thing you do in this case is step back and assess what you have then take into account that all of us have a life outside writing that is going to intrude and not allow you the time you need to focus then get down what you need to, sometimes, to make it flow the way you want.

Second, you pick ONE story and only ONE that you focus on. Put the others aside and don't even think about them for now. You put all the focus you have into just that story then sit down and write out as detailed of an outline as you can get for it, adding in character lists (most gaming systems dealing with RPing have something called character sheets, you can usually download them for free from various websites). For writers these are awesome aids to help you do this. You grab one then base something off of it you can work with yourself and fill it in to give the details, such as the one arm mentioned, and put that in a file, folder, whatever, that you can easily pull out. Keep the template because those character sheets can be so useful in many ways for every story you do!) and anything else you think you need then you go back to work but only on that ONE STORY! If anything else comes up you find a notebook, make a file on the computer, whatever, and do notes and outlines for other things but don't start them.

One of the biggest mistakes newer writers make is trying to start too much all at once, thinking they can handle the load. If you do that, chances are that you will never finish anything you start. Until you get a handle on what you can do, your style, how you work, what you work with, reality, etc. you need to just focus on one thing. Once you get that all sorted through, you start working. Just a hint; even with all that most of us have to go back and reread to remember something we did, how we worded something, etc. What I do with this is convert the file I use to a PDF so that i can mark places in it to reference back (adobe and foxit allow you to do something like that whereas most writing programs don't). However, you want to minimize this as much as you can and either take notes or do something like i suggested so that you can quickly reference what you need rather than spend time having to completely reread something (e.g. of that would have been the monster that was Supreme Conquest... if i had to go back and always reread the whole thing I would never have gotten anything done when it went over the 100k mark).

Now, with this, and I can hear most of you right now, you are going to get plunnies for other things or stuff for other stories sitting around that is going to mess with your mojo. Welcome to what it's like to write! We ALL get that, trust me. But you need to learn how to deal with it. I know, some of them sound wonderful, amazing and could, possibly, be something that would win you awards. But, you don't start writing any of them! What you do is outline, outline, outline then set it aside. Yes, some plunnies are more persistent than others and don't want to leave you alone, but, to satisfy them, you just write out or add to the outline you have for them, nothing more. You don't work on anything but that one story you picked out to do that with.

Third, you make an update schedule for yourself. No, don't do it like a work schedule to where you FORCE yourself to work on something at strict times, but a general time frame that you gradually hone until you have a set routine. Again, with this, you take into account something called 'life' and realize it's going to intrude, especially if you work full time, have kids, go to school, whatever. As you grow accustomed to what you've set up you'll find things flow easier as your manic brain settles into something it can work with. Then you can fine tune and such that schedule and, before you know it, you are on a regular update schedule for something, making both you and your readers happy.

Now, once you FINISH that story, you pick the next one and do all this again. You will find that when your focus isn't so divided on various things that it will work easier. Then, once you have between 3-5 completed stories under your belt then you should be on some kind of schedule that you can focus on and have a system for doing things. Then, and only then, should you even consider working on multiple stories at the same time. But even that is subjective. Many just cannot get their brains to shift from one complex plot to another to give a full focus on what that story could become because the brain can't shift the gears it needs to so it can skip back and forth (example; I have 3 chapter stories plus a oneshot collection in the works at this point. The oneshot isn't an issue but I'm having to skip from one very dramatic story in a separate fandom and genre from hentai to one that is at a high emotional point in another before totally backtracking and sliding into pure slapstick comedy for another. Many cannot handle doing something like that (my sanity is in question at all times so I'm managing but even then, there are days it feels like my gears are stripping from going from serious angst into something silly even with my allotted days in between to allow me to transition). Then, with that, you look through what you have and chose the one that is both calling to you and you have the most detailed notes or outlines on. It should be one that was probably bugging you and you honed in a way that it reads complete even though it's just an outline. That will be the one that you pick to work on, not the current fad plunnie gnawing at your sanity. Giving them time to grow and evolve gives you a better chance to work out major issues that might come up with it later on, ones that can actually kill a story, honestly.

Now, another thing to keep in account is the 'freedom time', as i call it. This is something that many writers get when they know that they are almost done with a story. During that chunk, when you know you're going to be free from its grasp soon, you've got most of what is coming worked out you just need to focus it from your brain to you fingers then into your writing program, so your brain starts to wander to other things that might be coming because, honestly, you're starting to lose interest in the current one because it's almost done. It's easy to give into the temptation to start a new one there, one that is holding you in its thrall at that moment. Don't do it! Chances are the one you are almost done with won't ever get finished if you do! Just hold the plunnie back and keep plugging.

Now, another hint is this… though there are exceptions to this rule like most others, the reality is that most should never start out their ‘writing career’ with a massive, complicated multi-chapter story. You do that and your chances of ever finishing it are slim to none. Again, there are exceptions but they are rare. All you need do is go into any fanfiction archive and look through the stories there to see that most first time, multi-chapter monsters beginners have started are incomplete and have very little chance of ever finding an end because of various things. It’s a sad fact but it’s true.

Despite school, creative writing classes, whatever you’ve done in the past, the reality of sitting down and hammering out a multi-chapter monster when you have no real experience is very different from the theory. Ask any writer… you can have the whole thing planned, plotted and smoothed out in your head but getting it from the brain through the fingers to the keyboard and making it work from there onto the computer is far different than just thinking it up! So, start slow… oneshots. Then work up to simple multi-chapter stories. Work your way up the ladder rather than jumping into the deep end of the ocean with just water wings when you've only had theory lessons of swimming. All of us that have more than one completed story under our belts can tell you that, over time, you change your writing style, shift the way you go about things, focus differently and, most of all, improve your craft because you have PRACTICE at it. Practice makes perfect, right? That’s what you’re shooting for! Not to do something that is so going to overwhelm you that it puts you off something.

Now… let’s revisit the evil lil monsters called plunnies…

Plunnies are evil little creatures whose sole purpose in life is to make you insane. Remember that! They aren’t doing what they do to ‘assist’ you, just to ‘assist’ you into a straight jacket. And, as we all know, some are better than others. That is what you need to focus on!

Sitting where I am right now, I can see six composition books, journals, notebooks, etc that are full, yes, folks, completely FULL, of various plunnies of all shapes and sizes in probably four separate fandoms. That doesn’t include the massive file I have on the computer of them nor the 2 dozen or so (probably more since some are buried under others) of post-it notes of them slapped to my monitor and computer tower or the ones that haven’t made it from my brain onto a piece of paper or computer somewhere. That is a huge herd of the nightmarish lil monsters. Will all of them get done? No. Some will die as they should, some will be given away (if you want them, I will glue all I can to you, trust me!), some will get merged with others and a few will become a story unto themselves. It takes time to sort them out. The trick with plunnies is simple… let them sit. If they are the great wonderful thing they profess to be, over time they will keep growing, maturing and evolving into something you can work with, giving you what you need for them to do that with. Like in nature, only the strongest of the critters will survive. If it’s meant to be something spectacular then it won’t just fade out if you do nothing with it. It will keep growing and evolving, changing into a good piece of something you can work with, ironing out some of the kinks that all of them have over time.

If you start a plunnie prematurely the issue comes in with something being ‘off’ with it. Many things can be fixed while you write by various means but if something fundamental is off with the plot then there is no real fixing it or writing around it. Letting a plunnie sit, stew and grow allows it to do that. It can come up with what the issue is then route around, back track or out and out change what is going on with it. That is the biggest reason, aside from retaining sanity, to let them sit for a time. Just take notes and keep a file somewhere of what you’re doing. The end result of doing that is a piece of work that you can be very proud of.

Now, these are just my hints on what to do and things I’ve found over the years that works for me. Take what you want or need then make it your own!

This is where I slam my head against my desk as I grudgingly agree with D-sama's wisdom- grudgingly I say because I already know how difficult it is going to be to follow what she's saying even though she's right.

That plot journal I'd started a decade ago? I remember now exactly why I'd done it. It was because I was sick to the teeth of finally making headway with writing out one story, only to have another idea hit. I'd say, 'I'll just be gone for a second' to the first story, thinking to jot something down for the new idea, only to find myself trying to make a story out of that rather than just 'jotting something down' and then when I came back to the first story, be it a week, a month, two months later I'd sometimes find that I'd left off literally in mid-sentence and even though I still knew the eventual progress of the story's idea, I had no clue exactly where I'd wanted that scene to go and would shelve the story- not to be touched again.

I didn't have the term 'plunnies' back then, but yeah, they were terrors even before they had a name. It was like, hit chapter 6 on anything and suddenly General Bunny, first name Plot, is in the back of your head shouting 'attaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!' to this massive plunnie army waiting in your creative-mind's wings. And the worst part is they're usually not that great, not when you're a kid marveling at every 'new-ish' idea you have. I have gone back and looked at some of the ideas I was enamored with when I was like 14 and I've been just . . . "Clearly I'm no S.E. Hinton" (for those not sure what I mean, Hinton was 16 when she wrote The Outsiders). To heck with those teenage plunnies not being mature, yet- I'm not even sure they were to term. Don't get me wrong, I know some teenage writers that are absolutely stellar, I just know that I was not one of them.

Get to 22, hadn't been writing in years, but just got swept up in this need to write- it just felt, in my heart that it was something I had to be doing. But sure enough, the second I started writing one story, I'd get a decent way in and then, you guessed it, 'attaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!' I remember feeling like the idea of having the notebook with me- so I could put down what I was writing, get out just enough of the basic idea to assauge whatever was nibbling at my brain at the time and then get back to what I was working on- was this miraculous stroke of genius. And it did work for a time . . . until I lost the notebook. And I can't even blame it completely on that. Quite simply, when you've been writing a long time- whether you're a massively accomplished veteran like Danyealle-sama, or just someone who's been trying to hone their literary skills while placating their plunnies and not really getting anywhere with the latter like me- your writing habits, whether they're good or bad, do become ingrained. And it's not as simple as breaking a force of habit- 'cause it's not like trying to stop biting your nails. This is quitting cold turkey after you've been smoking a couple packs a day for a few decades while trying to ignore that open pack of cigarettes that seems to have sprouted feet and be following you every where you go (and, for the record, I have quit both smoking and biting my nails, so this analogy isn't just me talking out of my behind). When you've gotten accustomed to allowing yourself to multi-task with writing- and I mean from the get-go, from those early bashful days before you even have the bravery to call yourself a writer aloud (which is what I consider myself, since I'm reserving the term 'author' for when I complete something, and I don't count one-shots, as, again, they are by their very definition complete as soon as you are finished writing them- minus, perhaps a few tweaks and edits)- this multi-tasking process becomes like an addiction. You simply can't write without falling into it.

And I know this is going to be a very, very difficult thing to break. But I'm also almost positive it might be the only way to get things done- at least for me. I've seen how much work I can churn out for a single story when I'm not focusing on anything else.

The schedule thing also helps, greatly. It may seem like plain ol' common sense, but it can be difficult to adapt to. I learned this in a very simple way- and again, like the notebook idea, I wish I'd stuck to it. What I was taught in this parenting class (which wasn't so much a class on parenting, as it was a discussion group to help parents learn that very simple-seeming lesson that in order to be all you can for your family, you need to be taking care of yourself- emotionally and mentally- as well) was to choose one thing, one good habit you wanted to incorporate into your life. We were handed grid sheets that had 30 'day' boxes on them and told that across the top of the sheet, we were to label what that habit was.

For each day that we completed our chosen task we put a check in the box- for every 6 straight days of accomplishing this, you put a star (whether you decide you earn some reward for this as a way of positive reinforcement is on you). That may seem to some of you very 'grade school-ish', but until you try this you really have no idea how great it feels to be able to draw that star in the box. It's not as strict of a scheduling as it may sound like, either, especially when it comes to something you can do whenever you have just a moment free. My chosen task was to write something each day, even if it was only a single sentence. Yes, you are, eventually, going to need to take breaks in between writing spurts, but you need to establish a schedule (and by establish, I don't just mean setting it up, I mean setting it up and sticking to it for a long enough time that you've become accustomed to it) before you can begin making changes to it. And granted, there are some days that you're just not going to get to it 'cause we all have those days when we are running about like headless chickens from the moment we drag ourselves out of bed until our head hits the pillow that night, and I know for a lot of us, it can be missing that single day that makes the entire schedule go out the window. About that, I'm going to say one day is one day, it's no reason not to pick it back up the next day and move forward. When I was sticking to my writing schedule, I was completing 1-2 chapters a week . . . which doesn't even seem like a lot to me anymore since I can now write a chapter in a matter of hours, but it was quite a bit to me at the time and I wouldn't be able to do that now if I hadn't gone through with that back then. It also helped to make notations in the boxes of what I'd done on each star-day- if I completed a chapter, how many pages I was up to of a new chapter, that sort of thing.

I'm almost positive that if I'd stuck to that schedule, I'd have finished that book already :/. 33 now and it looks like I'm off to by a new notebook . . . and make copies of some grade school-ish grid sheet.

I don't know if I fully agree with doing one at a time. Maybe because I'm an unprepared loser who is always vulnerable to the plunnies, but the very thing I made this forum to complain about can be a gift sometimes, because it's nice to be able to give something resting time and come back to it a while later and maybe I have a better idea for it than I did when I started. (There is no reason for me to have 10 uncompleted fanfics though with a list of 3 dead ones).

The plot bunny attacks me, I quickly start the first chapter.
At least with my multi-chaptered fanfics (wish I'd get a one shot plunny once in my life but w/e) I set a limit for myself. It's either going to be a 5 page for chapter fic, I use this for my less complicated stories that are just completely driven by the plot that don't really need that much detail to make it a great story, or 10-16 page limit fic for the more emotionally driven and complex stories.

I know I'm probably going to get a lot of crap for being the writer that decides chapter length by word count and page length rather than content, but it helps me focus especially in the planning stages, because I've done this formula so many times I know what ideas I need to bring into each chapter without overclouding other things. This way I don't overload me or the reader with a lot of complex plot right away.

I am beginning to really work on outlines, and now that I have this computer fixed I should probably do the PDF adobe thing to book mark information (I need to update a story that is a sequel to a 50 chapter story... this is the third time I'm rereading it @_@ shoot me now and maybe this is why it should be one and only one story at a time)

Gah I didn't even know what I'm talking about I suck.

Plunnies leave me alone, you're like little demons that possess me and make me feel good about myself when I post something cool that I make my own, but then you unleash hell upon me when I loose track of the original plunnie and the other ones eat me alive.

-dies in the sea of pages from her physical fanfiction folder*

I can't do one fic at a time, but I am inspired to limit myself to only 3 at a time. I'm going to set this goal and see if I can meet it. Only 3 (luckily one of those only needs one more chapter than it's done), and see if I can keep myself more organized when I only have three to handle and put my plunnies away.

I'm just going to say that what works for one writer may or may not work for another. There is no one "right" way to write. There is simply writing and not writing.

I completely second zandrellia in this.

I think it is good thing to receive and listen to advice from other writers who have faced similar problems, but no one is forcing you to follow the advice given to you.

Do not compare yourself to other writers and feel inferior because you wouldn't employ the methods of writing which the others might use.

In the end each of us is different, and we all have different styles and methods for writing. Some meticulously draft and outline the whole story chapter by chapter, while others come up with the story as they go, and some fall between these two extremes.

While you should be grateful for all the tips and advice given to you by the helpful writers, and you should not just shrug them off, in the end it is your own decision what you want to do with the advice given to you. Only you will know what works for you.

Toko- to you I say stop being so hard on yourself.

zandrellia & Chie- you are, of course, also correct. I should have said D-sama's advice seems right for me, but only because I've gone about it other ways, and only when I buckle down to one story and schedule myself do I really get things running smoothly writing-wise. True that only we know what is right for us, but we can't know a particular method or system won't work for us until we at least give it a try.

Everyone, please understand, when I wrote that comment, it was very early, I'd already been up for about an hour and was still half-asleep, so I may not have been as clear with certain things as perhaps I should have and I do apologize for that.

And back to Toko, lol- it is completely on you whether or not you want to follow anything anyone on this thread has said, I was just sharing my own personal experience with this issue and what I felt/feel might work for me.

In regards to chapters, I used to do something very similar by putting length over content, not that I said 'it has to be this word count or this many pages', so much as I refused to let it be under a set number of pages. This, I think though, was mostly because some novels that I've read have been by authors who will have a chapter that is literally one page (or less) long and it would be all I could do not to slam the book shut and hurl it across the room 'cause . . . it wasn't even like the passage was so crucial or important to the story or had anything that particularly set it apart from the chapter before or after, so . . . having that little snippet be its own chapter seemed to serve no purpose. It gets kind of underwhelming when you pick up the book and go, 'cool 46 chapters' and then find it only seems long 'cause some of those chapters are microscopic. It just really bugged me and I said "Ugh, a chapter should be at least 10 pages." Realistically, though, this just isn't always going to be something that's easy to do.

Even knowing this, I still cringe when I produce 'short' chapters, (which, in my mind is anything shorter than 6-8 pages). I have since adopted a more 'content over length' view, but that's my personal take on it, 'cause when I sit down to write a chapter, I have a very loose idea of 'okay, last chapter left off 'here', and I want this, this and this to happen in this chapter' . . . but then you get to the second 'this' and somewhere between accomplishing that and reaching 'this' number 3 you just feel that a particular line or scene is where that chapter should be ending. I once got into it with a reader on ff.net 'cause they PM'ed me telling me that I was 'ripping off' my readers and it would be more 'fair' of me were I to make each of my chapters longer than 6,000 words. Okay, that was that person's opinion, but it just galled me 'cause . . . how can you sit there and propose to tell someone else how many words they should be using to express their creativity? They're not your professor and you're not writing them an essay. I would love to have every entry I write be 6,000 + word count, I die a little inside when I finish a chapter, post it and see that it's below 4,000 words, but what am I gonna do? Ideas and creative flows aren't always going to fit into a set number of words and pages. Now, please understand, this isn't to say that you can't or shouldn't push yourself to make a set number of pages, whatever makes you comfortable with your writing, but don't beat yourself up if you find that it sometimes won't work that way.

If you find you can't really write without focusing on at least 3 stories at a time, than, again, that is all you, but I do think, personally, that even with 3 stories, you should follow the same basic rule as the 1 story focus. That is decide which stories you will be focusing on and do your best to stick to those. Any other ideas that come to you? That's what the notebook is for (whether that notebook is a laptop, ipod, smart phone . . . or an actual notebook), so that you don't have to feel like you're stifling or limiting your creativity, you can give those new plunnies their own space by putting them in the book and going back to what you've already told yourself you'll be working on.

And, again, I can't stress this enough, stop being so hard on yourself. I sometimes (heck, who am I kidding, more often than not) approach the dreaded plunnie, and end up with that first chapter, or the first few. This isn't to say 'don't do that'. If that's how the idea comes to you at first, then write that down, but it doesn't have to be a distraction from other things you want to focus on. Let that chapter be just that for now and, if it is any idea that is worth pursuing, most likely something about it will stick with you, allowing you to build on it as opposed to getting out those first few chapters and then going '. . . darn, what now?'

Personally, I'm not a super-organized person, things that I decide to organize, sure, I'll get a li'l OCD about, but that's pretty much it. I don't do in-depth outlines and plot planning, I get an idea, I write some of it out- whether it be that very first chapter or just a basic outline (but oddly usually never both :/ )- and the plunnie is either off and running and you've got a story going, or the plunnie dies quietly; not that you completely forget it, but when you recall it you find yourself going 'eh, I'm not so thrilled with that idea anymore' and you can let it go rather easily.

Ultimately, whatever you do to deal with your plunnies is up to you, plain and simple. Anyone in the thread that came across as telling you what to do, very probably wasn't intending it that way- just that they were sharing what they think would help you to not have to continue having these issues, nothing more.

the forum is an open exchange of ideas and opinions. No one should take offense or read too much in to what others say. A lot is lost in translation through the net, so give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

Freya, I didn't think you said anything off color. Don't worry about it.

Your post was awesome Freya

I didn't mean to be hard on myself, but I do think it will be fun to listen to what other people have to say (like Danyelle saying do one and one story only a time which I translate to 3-4 cause I don't believe in myself that much) and try it out to see if it works. So far I really think my story quality is going to be a lot better for the 3 that I'm focusing on (Avalon Hill, Serenity Trails, and some ff.net Inu/Kag fic if anyone cares) and the whole outlining process has helped me out a lot. I won't lie usually I just know where I want things to end or think of one event that needs to happen in the chapter and just go ahead and write and see where my scenes lead me, but I came up with a lot more ideas when I put it into an organized outline.

Need to consult my notebook again soon though because I need to keep my super hero story plunnies in there as well as ideas for a oneshot.

Back to talking about content over length I really doubted myself when it comes to Marriage of Conveience I mean I am 4 reviews away from having 2,000 on FF.net but I can't accept that it's like 'fffff only reason it's popular is cause I have 50+ chapters and if it were 10 pages per chapter therefore 25 chapters I wouldn't have barely any reviews. I suck' but then I remember that I've been using the 5 page little detail straight plot or 10 page lot of detail more complex plot format before I made that story and it's always nice to have a format to fall back on. Keeps stuff more organized for me in the long run.

Nearly 2k reviews is nothing to scoff at, even on FF.net.

I wouldn't assume it is simply based on length.

I'd say you're just being exceptionally hard on yourself. Reviews and page length are really not what you should base your quality as a writer on.

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.