Maunderings

A kind soul left a very complimentary comment on one of my Bradley/Colin fics on AO3 today, which got me to reading a couple of my old Merlin fics. There is something so strange about knowing with a hundred percent certainty you strung all those words together into a story and yet thinking, omg I wrote that?, because some of it was actually quite good?? And yet if I were to sit down and write that very same story today, it might well suck a big toe. Is it because I'm out of practice -- after all, in my most active days of fandom, I'd churned out something like a fic a month, and now I put out a story once a year, if that -- or did I already peak as a writer several years ago without anyone telling me?

I'm not necessarily looking for an answer; the thought just comes up every so often. And I do cycle through periods where the last thing I wrote is what I consider my best, and then a few months later, I reread it and think it's hot garbage, and then several months (or years) after that, on further reread, think perhaps it might be a worthy effort after all.

So I guess what this all means is that my opinion can't be trusted. Oop.