28-04-09 

Since pretty much the first week of classes my TAFE teachers have been saying "Don't delete anything you write, ever." And it's only recently that I realised how important that is.

I don't know why, but I suddenly got an intense urge to re-read a story I wrote years ago but werewolves and wizards and weird things. It wasn't well-written or original and the main reason I deleted it was because I got quite sick of the amount of fan-fiction cluttering my laptop. Now I'm close to taring my hair out. I want so badly to read it, but I know deap down that I can't ever get it back.

Not only did I put it in the recycle bin, but I emptied the bin and switched laptops. That story, and dozens of others, are never coming back.

When I first started writing, outside of the classroom bounderies, I didn't understand why I did.

I can tell you I was fifteen, because my stories are obsessively sorted into the years they were written. It was 2006 and I had little to no originality in me, although hints were peaking through. Mostly I wrote fan-fiction, usually involving rock stars like Gerard Way and Ville Valo. I did a few Harry Potter pieces that were absolute rubbish. I even tried an Eragon spinoff, and that was just blatant crap.

2007 was slightly better, slightly. But it still had fan-fiction. That phase wasn't eliminated until 2008.

Anyway, back on track, the point I'm trying to make is that it has been occuring to me slowly over the last couple of years that I write in order to read it back to myself. It's strange. If I re-read a story then I can remember the majority of it after just a page or two, whether its my own or someone else's. There's really not much need for me to go back over my old work, esspecially the stuff shoved into the 'Abandoned' folders.

But I pull them out, sit back and take the time to re-read each and every word. And when I get to the end I sigh and wish I had taken it further. Sometimes I try to start a story up again, most times I don't bother. It's hard to get that specific tone back. And there come the times when I wish I had written more.

I wish I hadn't deleted all those half-arsed, Mary-Sue wannabe, j-grade stories.

They were entertaining, if nothing else.