Not just any writing, but finished writing that I really love! (And trust me, "love" can be a complicated thing as a writer. There's a lot of stuff I've written that I don't love, to put it mildly.) These are all my short stories about the world of my books, most of which I've shared to this blog. But having it there in my hands where I can flip through the pages and see the words in print is such a wonderful feeling! This reassures me that I’ve done a ton of writing- and that's not including my world building (that’s in another binder), my novel drafts themselves (those are on the computer), or the stories that are only partly written. I have the sections divided by the year I wrote the stories (2015-17 so far) with one for the longer novella I wrote two years ago.


In the folder are drawings of my characters that my husband did, layouts and maps of my locations, and drawings of my characters’ home. And as a bonus happiness, I have a section in here for fanfic that my writing partner-in-crime and my husband wrote for me. (That's here on my blog, too, if you want to read it.)




So if I get bummed out and feeling like I haven’t made much progress as an author because my books aren’t done, I need to look at this and see just how many finished, polished words I’ve written in the past few years. My book drafts are super rough and that bums me out sometimes because they don’t feel right, like they’re not the style I want them to be, but eventually they’ll be edited and make me as happy as looking at these stories does.

I absolutely recommend this to other writers. Even if you've only written one story, print that baby out and put it where you can see it. You did something amazing that's entirely you own and you deserve to preen about it! Be your own biggest fan! (You know, to counteract all the times when you feel like your writing is terrible and you're a hack. Take advantage of the prideful moments, okay?)

~Meri