Authors (and especially co-authors), any advice for me?

Alright, first of all, I can hardly call myself an active member on this site nowadays, but since my problem concerns writing, what better place to ask for a little advice?

So I'll get straight to the point. Once upon a time, I wrote a lot of stories with a very close friend of mine. The bestie, if you will. If memory serves, it began in Grade 10, and man did we run with it. I'm talking hundreds upon hundreds, if not thousands, of hand written pages, with a huge 'main' story and then probably a dozen little spinoffs which addressed everything we wanted to write but couldn't work into the main one. To be honest, it was a huge part of my life (all things considering, I would assume it was for her as well). Texting plans to each other at three in the morning, spending entire weekends in my basement writing, bringing it along to school to work on during class. We continued it for years, up until the first semester of university.

I'm going to spare the details, it's not what this blog was meant for. To make it short and not-so-sweet, we parted on less than agreeable terms that year, and haven't spoken since. That would make it...about three years now? That entire time all of our work has been sitting in a box under my bed at my parents' house (I no longer live with them, but still have 'my' room there). I struggled for a long time to move on from our friendship, and couldn't imagine getting rid of it. It was the only thing I had left of my best friend. Now, though...

I'm headed to my parents' place in a couple weeks for Spring Break (woo, party party), and my mom has informed me I'll be cleaning out my room so she can turn it into a guest room for when I'm not around. That means dealing with the box of painful memories under my bed. I've come a long way since then though, and with the exception of maybe a couple pages because I'm a sentimental idiot, I think I can get rid of our stories.

The thing is.

Should I contact her? Let her know what I'm doing? Ask if she wants them? Anything?

I have no idea what to do, honestly. She made it pretty clear that she had no intentions of continuing our friendship, and as I mentioned we haven't spoken in years. But even so, I can't help but think that all of it is still hers as much as mine, and to destroy something she spent years of her life working on without her even knowing...I don't know. At the same time, I realize there is an equal (if not larger) chance that she wouldn't care at all at this point. Like I said, I think I was always the sentimental idiot, not her.

So, authors and co-authors, what would you do in my place? If you were her, what would you want me to do?

Any and all advice much appreciated!
February 3rd, 2014 at 12:17pm