Angles
I have a small trove of pre-Internet writings. Some fiction, some not. Nothing particularly good, but as snapshots of a time before ubiquitous connection and distraction, refreshing to revisit. It sparked me to (finally!) write a story about how finding lost fragments of someone else's life might help make sense of your own. Pushed through lots of impostor syndrome and shared it in a few writing groups.
"Oh, the found-footage angle. That was played out years ago."
No, I really do have these old docs. Most ported over from dead word processing formats, some written on an electric typewriter, some longhand. They kind of mean a lot to me.
"1980s tech Easter eggs, great. Build that mythology."
Angles. Impression management. Pitching agents. Leveraging platforms. Genre expectations, tropes, formulas. Writing to market. Building your brand (ugh). Rare are conversations about how to write small stories that might genuinely connect with a few people. That seems to happen here, so I'm grateful to be a small part of it.