saki101

I hardly ever use them unless to look for an author to see if they have anything new. When I want to read something, I usually just browse what's new in a fandom or even start from the oldest stories.

Same here. Until they have a tag for "good writing" (that I trust), the tags don't help me. I don't read in many fandoms anyway, and not in any really large ones, so it's easy just to browse and sample. The only place I use the search function is MFU, and there it's in a negative sense, to cut out the noise of the 500 stories by the same author.

It feels odd to be writing without a looming deadline, so I've been playing around a bit--not very efficient perhaps, but I'm learning things :)