Back at printing out my longer stories

Monalisa approves.

For the whole of last year, I continued writing longer stories (10k words and above) but stopped printing them out for re-reading and editing. I had to get rid of my stash of printouts while moving and thought twice about amassing a new pile at my new home.

Reviewing the posted versions of last year's longer stories allowed me to see the advantages of getting a hard copy of my draft. Reading on paper feels slower since there are more words over a larger surface area, yet it allows me to finish editing faster since I could see from the number of physical pages how much story I have. After only editing with a computer, I spotted months after posting some parts of my story that called for refining, bringing up the total rounds of editing for the same story.

Currently I live further away from a shop where I can get my draft printed cheaply, but it's worth it even with some nervousness over someone else glimpsing at the bits of smut in the print preview 😵 My writing appears formal and official when printed out, which is kind of hilarious when I get to the parts that are smutty and in general of a nature commonly seen only in fanfic.

Yesterday, I finished editing and marking up the printout of my latest draft. It took me a month to write and a lot less time to re-read. That's a very good sign! Also I very much cherish the moments when I paused re-reading to laugh or just sit with delightful thoughts about my OTP 😌