I put all the context there that I was X age, using the "archive" part of AO3 for its purpose, and it felt good. In mid-2024, MTVNews vanished from the internet, and with it, I realized my first outlet also vanished from the internet.
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I spent three days in a daze using the Wayback Machine to get copies of everything I'd written. So, in my head, I've now backed up and archived the fanfic and the articles; now it's time to do the original stories, manuscripts, and whatnot.
I spent several months using Lulu's print-on-demand service to get hard copies of everything from the first short stories I have copies of to the manuscript I've completed recently.
I have a few more to publish, but I have a row of books with my name on them that show how much work I've done over the years, and it's tangible in a way my articles and fanfic haven't been. I've been enjoying this process.
Through it, I've found entire projects I've forgotten about buried in the depths of my computer, and I've had a grand old time designing covers for decades-old books and stories. It's hard for creatives to look back.
I know many of them have this knee-jerk reaction to delete and never look back. I don't blame people for that, but I wish more people would embrace the idea that we all start somewhere, even if that somewhere is writing in MS Paint because you don't know how to open Word.
People delete? I'm still mad about a file that got corrupted that I wrote in high school for the underground newspaper, but they wouldn't publish what a girl wrote. I still have the disk that it died on.
And I found some Star Trek fan fic I had no recollection writing, on paper.
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And I found some Star Trek fan fic I had no recollection writing, on paper.