We have some folders stuffed with old papers. More importantly, we have hard drives and cloud storage that are the digital equivalent of the same. Dawn and I try to make sure that a good portion of the stuff we’ve produced over the years for Zombie Ranch exists somewhere in a recoverable format that’s either a high resolution image or something that can be scanned to produce one. It came in very handy when producing our trade paperback. Heck, it came in handy just this week for presenting our filler piece, which originally was hand-drawn by Dawn over six years ago.

Old storyboards, scrawled notes on script printouts… we don’t save everything, but I try to keep enough around to provide glimpses of where we’ve been, in case it proves of eventual interest to ourselves or others. It’s not too weird of an instinct, as anyone who scrapbooks (or has a relative who does) can attest, but when you’re working on a project like this it takes on a whole other level, because hey, there might just be a group of strangers out there who have a real interest in your progression — if not now, than somewhere down the road in a place and time you may not even be able to foresee yet.

Call it nostalgia, perhaps even call it borderline hoarding… for purveyors of fiction, I contend that hanging onto the keepsakes of your past is just good business.