Analog Revisions
My writing has always felt better if I started by drafting them longhand. Working analog allows me to annotate as I go, scrawling my comments in the margins. In essence, the typed version is already a second draft with more revisions made on the fly. More revisions done on the computer. I hit submit, I hit send. Sometimes I get away with minimum changes before it goes live somewhere, but by now the piece on paper might be an entirely different beast than the one which bears its final name. These final versions live in mostly-organized plain text files, so software obsolescence still hasn't failed me yet.
But we all know that physical media still triumphs digital when it comes to archival quality, and I was beset with this yearning of consolidating everything I write in one place. The easiest and probably sanest method is probably just printing my final pieces as they were submitted and bind them. I would have everything, they would be clean, it wouldn't take me too much time. My early pieces were published back when print media was still a thing, so a more elaborate attempt could involve literal cutting and pasting.
But no. In the manner of human hubris, I'd like them to have the same handwritten quality as my drafts, so I resorted to transcribing them manually. For shorter works like poetry, I dare say I enjoyed the process. For a while. For longform writings like essays and stories, the weakness of this method was apparent. The whole thing quickly fell by the wayside, and once I was sufficiently behind the thought of spending time and energy on this archival practice made me shudder. I still have to work on present demands.
I still have a half-filled notebook from my last attempt, taunting me to try again. A more logical part of me tells me to just tidy up my digital archives and print from there.
If any of you has ever done this sort of thing before, I'd be thrilled to hear what works for you.