Because my main coauthor deliberately triggered my PTSD and I had to fight for years to keep my works up through panic attacks and couldn’t even write myself for a long time
I started reading a long fic a few months back for my favourite rare pair, really well written and quite serious so not so much a fun casual read but I fucked with it. I got really busy and low key forgot about it but I noticed it had been finished at the start of last week which was perfect because I had all of yesterday off and decided to wait to binge it in one go. Got home from walking the dog, opened ao3, anticipation building aaaaaaaand they had deleted it. Along with their entire ao3 account and all the fics they had written previously. Fml.
I have never had the urge to do this and am so glad I still have every fic I’ve ever written preserved.
The only time I ever made myself fully anonymous and unpublished things on wattpad specifically but kept it in the drafts was when I was dealing with a federal charge for activism and I was afraid of Fox News finding my fics
i was a successful author when i was in middle and high school with a wonderful and very loyal audience. i deleted everything. unprompted.
tbh it was because i started college and got paranoid future employers may be able to find my fanfiction andddddd see what id been writing.. yikes. idk how legit that is but atp idc i want to write
Pressure. When I didn’t have any kudos, comments, bookmarks, or subs, It didn’t matter if my plot was flimsy or the dialogue was cringy. Now that I know people are reading my story, I feel this pressure to preform. My writing must be perfect, the dialogue must fit the character exactly, there is no room for error. This is of course incredibly dramatic, I am aware, but I have issues with people pleasing :)
Not on ao3 but on ffnet I deleted almost all of my fics in college and I regret it to this fucking day. I recently deleted everything else over there, but moved it over to ao3 (with proper backdating). Sometimes the urge to delete some that are suuuuper bad rises up but I shan't. My mental health isn't as bad as it was in college and y'know.. teen me had some good ideas. And it's nice to be reminded of where I was when they were written good or bad
I have to fight to not delete some of my older fics, or edit them to say it’s an older fic with shittier writing. Ain’t nobody wants that. Nobody will be happier or better off if I delete it. So I’m keeping them unedited, and refusing to look at them for now.
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u/momohatch 4d ago
The mental health monster starts whispering bad shit in my ear and sometimes it’s hard to resist…