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.
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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.
On AO3, people delete a lot. I recently downloaded my bookmarks, and there were hundreds of deleted fics. On AO3, it makes even less sense because they have the ability to "orphan" a story, so it isn't connected to your account. It's an archive, but archives only work if you don't delete old stuff.
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And I found some Star Trek fan fic I had no recollection writing, on paper.