writing improvement meme

Inspired by amielleon's similar tumblr post.

I decided to dive through what I could find of my old stuff and see how my writing's changed through the years. Several RPG posts are included just because I put a lot of effort into RPGs for a great portion of my writing journey and whatnot. I didn't go out of my way to find things that were especially good or especially embarrassing (though some of these are indeed embarrassing)—mostly I aimed for things I thought were fine/good/okay at the time of writing, rather than finding things that I thought were THE GREATEST THING EVAR or THE WORST THING I EVER WROTE at the time of writing.

( Legends, 1999 )

( Dawn Warriors, 2000-2002ish )

( RPG post, 2003 )

( short story, 2005 )

( Distant Thunder, 2007 )

( RPG post, 2007 )

( North Star, 2008 )

( short story, 2011 )

I guess the trends aren't that interesting. I mean, the early stuff's just stilted in obvious, hey-I'm-young-and-getting-used-to-this-writing-thing ways, everything in the 2003-2006 era tends toward purple-ness and melodrama, and things seem to start settling around 2007, with several awkward bumps and edges that get sanded off later. I still see the earliest form of a lot of the rhythmic tricks I try for pretty regularly nowadays, though. Maybe that's about when I was finding my "voice" (whatever the fuck that means)? Or maybe I've just been stagnating/progressing more slowly since then, whichever :P