Pre-AO3 Fic

[queer_scribbling]

I'm keeping track of this comment from ~enchantedsleeper's post about a personal fanworks archive and Small Web September, mostly due to recounting my initial fanfic creating and sharing:

 

Does anyone here have any personal archiving projects, whether 'small web'/personal websites or just on AO3, SquidgeWorld or the like? How do you feel about going back to your very earliest fanworks?

I don't have much pre-AO3 fic to actually archive. I used to write by hand in notebooks, and those notebooks have been recycled, lost, or thrown out at this point. I never did anything fandom related on LJ (it just held some personal blogging with a friend or two), and I didn't share any fic on Tumblr or WordPress before I started posting to AO3. I have a vague memory of losing some fic on DA to a purge, and I think there are some ancient email drafts with notes for a few fics, but I really only needed to save one main story from FF.net.

Going back to re-read and (due to not coming across a workaround until afterwards) re-type that story wasn't pleasant. I didn't hate it, but I also feel okay with leaving it in a private folder to not been seen for potentially another ten years or so. Due to not being able to re-find anything else from that time period, I can't say it was an example of my worst writing or anything. It was just a clearly young writer still figuring out basic rules of grammar.

I haven't made much progress on finishing my cross-posting AO3 works to SqWA, though that is a goal for this year. I've heard of people starting up personal archives on Neocities or Dreamwidth on and off for a few years now (mostly here on Pillowfort, but also on Tumblr), and I kind of like the idea in theory. I don't want to juggle too many archival plans at once (as that way lies not completing any plans), and I'm also ambivalent about learning to code, so I haven't really committed to the idea.

After making a DW account in order to access the mod comm for Snowflake Challenge, I considered maybe making a community or devoting some of my DW blog to archiving stuff. [I only have to worry about text.] I'm still in the process of archiving PF posts, though, so I don't want to start coming up with tags or anything. I might flirt with the idea for a while longer. Like, I do like that you have a section for unfinished works on your personal archive, and I do like the idea of doing something with some partially started fics or very detailed notes when I don't want to put those on AO3.