Its sad when web pages you used to frequent so much that the web address was burned into your mind vanish.

The first website that I ever posted Eternal Promises in Aishiteru, or http://www.yaoijanai.com is no more.  It was a massive archive of gundam wing fanfiction, and it was a really awesome place to get some feed back.  There was no comments system, the author had to leave an email address for someone to leave them a review.  I think it weeded out the flames, or the people who would just click comment and leave crap for the author.  The reviews that you actually got were well thought out, and usually only sent by the people who felt it was important to go out of their way to let you know how much they enjoyed what you were writing.

I love ff.net, and I only joined that site after finding a few other places I liked more, but the thing that I don’t like about the site, besides the annoying new adds, is the fact that while they have made it easier and more accessible for fans to post comments and reviews and send emails to the authors, it has opened the door for more non constructive comments, even harsh words.  Not that I think that ever site should go back to the way it used to be, I enjoy seeing any review mainly because I try and use them as a way to improve the things I write.  I try and incorporate the good ideas people leave, and use them to improve ideas I maybe had previously.  Maybe its that I wish that the people leaving reviews or criticisms for authors would stop and take a look at what it is they are reading.  Do they write themselves?  Do they have any idea what the author has go through at all to put they’re ideas down on paper in a consecutive series of events?  Writing is one of those things that takes work, and no matter what anyone says, its not easy.  Well it isn’t easy without much work put into it.

Just speaking from my own experience, I find that the longer you pick at something, the more you understand the subject or your characters can make the words flow better, but that’s not all that it is.  You have to have a good plot, a good story basis to work with or it doesn’t matter what you manage to put down on the paper, it won’t be very good or engaging. 

That being said, fluff is always enjoyable if done right, and there doesn’t necessarily have to be a true story to go along with it.

It takes a lot of courage to put your writing out there for other people to read it.  It takes courage to put a piece of yourself on display no matter what your craft, and the best thing that anyone offering critisisem can do is to put themselves in the creators shoes for a moment and appreciate what it was that was done, no matter if its to your taste or not.  Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing at all.

Now back to revisions.