I’m having a lot of thoughts right now about rereading things I have written.
I struggle to reread original work. I don’t get lost in it when I start reading it, and I suspect that’s because I have already read it a few hundred times (I’m exaggerating, but it’s a lot) before it was put out for public consumption.
But fic. Ohhhh… I am one of those weirdos who loves to reread fic I wrote.
This came to mind because in the past few days, I’ve reread two old fics because both of them came up on my radar for different reasons.
(They were the “Love You So Hard” series of Scott/Stiles fics, and the “Dancing On Blades” Sterek Olympic figure skating AU, both from the Teen Wolf fandom, if you’re curious).
I didn’t mean to read them. But then I sat down trying to remember exactly what I’d written, and a half hour or so later, there I was like oh. Hey. I wrote that and I do not hate it. In fact, I now have a bit of a words hangover where I’m not ready to leave that world.
I love and hate that hangover. I get it both from reading and writing. In this moment, it reminded me a lot of what I loved about both writing and reading fic.
I haven’t had time to write fic recently. I have several unfinished WIPs in a Scrivener file, but if I’m not getting the overdue original done, I don’t feel like I can take time to write fic.
I haven’t been reading fic, either. I’m so far out of the fandoms I used to be part of, I don’t know how to find the fic that will give me the feels I love. I haven’t found a new fandom to be obsessed by where I feel comfortably falling into it. I admit, I like big fandoms, mostly because I love the variety of work and the ability to find so many wonderful gems. Small fandoms are great for flailing in meta, but terrible for finding more than a few fics.
Reading these two pieces years after I wrote them (and yes, I have reread both of them before) brought me right back to the world I lived in at the time. The world of fic. The feels. The memories of what it was like to belong to a big fandom, and all that energy.
I miss it.
But this isn’t about fandom—this is about rereading my own words.
I’ve heard a lot of writers say that they never reread their own pieces, whether that is fic or original. They don’t want to revisit them. They are uncomfortable.
I find great delight in rediscovering myself. Every story is a snapshot of where my mind was in that moment. Every story is a reminder that yes, I can write, and I don’t hate my words. They are GOOD words. They made someone smile enough to leave a comment, and when I reread them, they make me smile, too.
I, too, want to comment to ask, “hey, where’s the rest? can I have more of this?” and that’s a tad bit frustrating since um, the only way that’ll happen is if I write it.
It makes me want to write more, though. Not necessarily that story. Maybe an original piece. Maybe something inspired by it. Might be difficult, given that one of those stories was absolutely buried in the world of Teen Wolf, and the other was a fanfic nod to Yuri on Ice without being a full-on YOI fic.
But at the same time, I have shapeshifter pack politics in my PHU serial; Alaric has to deal with it all the time. And much of the inspiration for that was drawn from things I developed that were my own head-canons while writing TW fic.
Writing is about learning. Writing fic is about joy, and it’s also about testing theories, and playing with words and ideas in familiar spaces.
It’s about creating a soft blanket that someone might want to wrap up in again and again, shutting out the cold, dark night.
I’m happy that rereading my own work gave me that feel, like I could build a blanket fort out of a story and retreat into a simpler time.
I want to create those same feels with my original work. I want to create a comfort blankie made of words.
In the meantime, I need to stop rereading my own work and move on. Write new words. Remember that if I did it before, I can do it again, and better this time. I’m not done. There are still stories in me; my mind is a library waiting to give books to those who need them.