#readerly things

So earlier I was reading a thread about Fanfic writers abandoning their fics, or deleting their accounts when they were no longer interested in writing anymore, because they felt the need to move on to other things (other types of writing, or life is lifing, etc), and I have to say this...don't delete your fics.

You never know wo needs to read that story (completed or not) years from now after you have forgotten/abandoned them.

Lemme give you an example.

Years ago, after the new Star Trek reboot came out in 2009 I was busy working a difficult job and struggling to write anything and just make a living. I'd always been a Star Trek fan since I was little. LIke seriously, I had a Klingon language handbook in highschool, I own a Star Trek cocktail dress, a messenger, bag, and a tiny replica of the Enterprise (that used to light up). I hadn't read or written fanifics in years, so I was out of touch with the fandom. When the reboot movie came out, I loved it, but I had hit a rough patch in a long term relationship, a lot of my friends were moving away to different cities and countries, and I was feeling depressed and not really finding much happiness.

About six years after the first reboot movie came out, I tried to find and old livejournal account I had that I used to write Blade, X Files, Star Trek, & other fics with. Perusing fandoms I dipped back into looking at new Star Trek content on other fanfiction websites and stumbled across some great new Star Trek fics that were amazing (My thing was the Spock/Uhura pairing). Baybee, when I tell you those stories from various writers lifted my spirits and gave me something to look forward to at the end of a hard day or week of draining work! I laughed, cried, fell in love, felt enraged, surprised, and so many emotions reading made up stories from strangers all over the world. A lot of these fics had been abandoned or the writers had left the fandom and weren't writing anymore by the time I found them...but I still had their stories. One particular writer had a 4 book Star Trek series that was better than the studio sanctioned movie book adapatations I bought at SF/F conventions or online. Just A+ writing and wordbuilding.

Reading those fics bolstered my confidence (and dopamine) to go back to living life again as best I could, and also writing my own fanfics again. I took time to write this particular writer to tell her thank you. I never heard from her (didn't expect to), but I was grateful to be able to read their work over and over again when I was feeling low, or needed to revisit old familiar friends.

All this to say, pleadingly so, don't delete your stories. Someone years from now, someone like me, may find your work and latch onto it as their lifeline to keep on getting up in the morning...have something to come home to. Or need that story you made up on the fly to give them a new way of looking at the world that will help them cope and keeping trying to make it out here.

Your stories are needed, your unique voices are needed on here, even if you no longer write anything for fandoms.

I really have to learn how to bookmark stuff. I swear I’ll remember a specific fic I loved just by the tags. I’m terrible at remembering names to stuff. I was goofing off looking for old Star Trek, SleepyHollow, Into The Badlands, and Outsiders stuff just to revisit old fandom faves and went down a rabbit hole until 3 a.m.

"You mean a library?"

Every time I get books shipped to me, I'm going to use the same box to donate that amount of books to Better World Books. I have three books coming (from Olden Times when I still had more than double digits in my banking account), so I'll be donating three books with a prepaid label and a cleaned-off cardboard box.

The used bookstores are charming and I love a good trade paperback from the '70s, but if they accept swaps the selection veers into about 60% romance novels and 20% shitty novelty books about jokes and trivia. Big retail stores afford shelves upon shelves to pop psychology books, weight loss books, the kind of cook books that are contracted from television shows, and a thousand little printed journals and bookmarks, all extremely overpriced considering the steep depreciation of worth as soon as they are purchased. 

If I bought a brand new "classic" novel from a big retail store for, let's say, $20 I could go to a used bookstore and get about $6-$10 for it the same day. Sure it would be a clean copy, but it's also not something anyone would run out to buy. It's instantly worth half of what it was, just because of the nature of selling books.

I have a considerable book collection that extends back about 15 years. If I sold every bit to whomever would buy, including the textbooks refused by the university shops, I'd make perhaps $200. It's my life's sole collection and it's worth about 2% what I paid for it all.