I Wrote Ten Thousand Words I Don't Remember and They Were All Love Stories

I have been digging through old stories lately. Not metaphorically digging — actual digital archaeology. Folders inside folders inside folders on backup drives with names like “writing stuff 2014” and “stories maybe final.” The kind of organizational system that would make a librarian weep. Here’s the thing about finding stories you wrote ten years ago: some of them you remember. You remember the premise, the characters, the scene you were really proud of. And some of them you don’t remember at all. Not even a little. I found a 10,000+ word story that I have absolutely no memory of writing. I read it like it was written by a stranger. A stranger who had my exact taste in sentence structure and apparently my exact inability to end a chapter without a cliffhanger. And it was good. Not polished, not ready for anything, but the idea was solid. The bones were there. That’s a weird feeling — being impressed by yourself in a way that feels like being impressed by someone else. Like finding…