vulgarweed | Look! I'm trying to write! *crash*

Am working on

lgbtfest fic, which is in LOTR fandom, and remembering that what I loved to write about most in Middle-earth are the characters on the edges and corners and margins who never got anything resembling their full stories told, because they are the ones who made Tolkien's worldbuilding as vivid and deep and enduring as it is. Every fictional world should be like that: the sense that the main narrative is by necessity only a tiny tip of the iceberg.

I'm feeling melancholy, though. Often, writers say that they look at their old stories and are embarrassed by how bad they are. Sometimes, I look at my old stories and think, "I wrote that?" and start to feel that I was once so much more confident and imaginative than I am now, and worry I might never be that good again.