See, personally I need something to force me to release, because otherwise I’ll never get anywhere with it. Which means all of my released works were written under some sort of constraint that makes me see them as a success.
Scroll Thief was a teenager’s first foray into IF, a massively over-ambitious and over-complicated piece, but it works and the systems mostly cohere despite the sprawling premise!
Enigma of the Old Manor House was written in four hours for ECTOCOMP, and within that four-hour deadline, I can’t think of anything else I could have improved!
Loose Ends Chapter One was my first experiment with choice-based IF, and my first collaboration, and I learned a lot during it!
Death on the Stormrider was my first attempt to scope out a full project and realize it (Scroll Thief just grew and grew without limit and Enigma was bite-sized) and I succeeded at telling the story I wanted to tell!
Labyrinthine Library of Xleksixnrewix was an attempt to get two non-IF people into it and we had a lot of fun writing it together!
I don’t know how accurate it is, but I’m trying to get into this mindset, because otherwise I’ll never release anything ever. None of them are masterpieces, but I’m proud to have them out there to see.