I have more than 200 unfinished stories clustering around me like tiny, empty, liquor bottles around the corpse of a destitute alcoholic.
Besides the stories I have started and not finished on this site and others, like The Pregnant Boy and 30 Million Reasons, and ones that I am still working on like Pete's Vagina and Special FX, I have scores hidden away on hard drives, many of them tantalizing, fragmentary visions of longer works.
Some are multiple chapters as long as novels, some are full outlines, some are single partial chapters or vignettes or semi-organized notes. Some are just titles. Some have just enough to be intriguing, tantalizing, and some are just blank walls; like, what was I thinking when I wrote that?
I found one this morning called "The Witch's Kiss" about a haunted pinball machine and a gangster's daughter.
Another called "Staggerfly" about an aging conman who fakes his own death.
"Feast of the Undying" is about the ghoulish secret of immortality.
"Captain Yankee" is superhero slapstick.
"Knight of a Thousand Stars" is about interstellar empires.
"A Voice for Trout" seems to be about a boy who loses his ability to talk in a car accident.
"Keremy Kerrigan" is what? I just wrote the name on a file but I vaguely remember bits of story about the son of unrepentant hippies, trying to find out why he feels he was born into the wrong body. If I wrote those parts down somewhere, they aren't in this file.
"Doctor Yin" is only an elaborate chapter about a virtual reality device.
Files I haven't even opened with names like "deadloss", "glitch", "meatcute", and "mustbemagic".
I'm haunted by this stuff. Because I know there is much of it that will never get written.
Maybe if I hurry....
Hugs,
Erin
Comments
Hurry First...
...on Thirty Million Reasons. That story haunts me.
The first chapter had 13,780 hits. Chapter eleven, the last chapter written -- sixteen years ago -- had 7,789 hits. That is exceedingly good reader persistence.
Great characters. Fantastic conflict.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Tons Of Shi*
A while back, I’d write stories for TGFiction and she’d sent me a check. I did that for two years. Some were good and some less. She rejected about 50%. I still have them all filed away. Looking back, they aren’t me anymore. But, I refuse to kill my mutant babies.
And then there’s my shower collection - ideas that I’d flesh out for a page and realize they weren’t going anywhere so I’d stop
I’m a low energy person and working keeps me busy. Finding time to write well consumes me.
Brian Wilson from The Beach Boys admitted he was doing a lot of speed when he penned all his classics. Arthur Conan Doyle did opium. Hunter S. Thompson took everything for his gonzo writing. Maybe I need to take a sabbatical, do drugs, and write the great American novel to win the $600,000 Macauthor Fellowship
Was it...
... opium or cocaine?
-- Daphne Xu
I'm the same
I have 11 stories I have at least started on my google drive page, and a bunch of story titles in a notebook
Like the cat lady
I would have said, "Welcome to my world" but you far out distance me in the "unfinished story" category. In some ways like the cat lady, there seems to be an ever increasing number with no hope of stopping the trend.
In one way, you make me feel better about the large number of started stories the are laying fallow on my hard drive. In another, you cause me to feel a little uneasy because you seem to point to how my future will play out.
I hope our muses will get off the dime and provide the impetus to finish these tales.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
A Dozen or So.
There are only about a dozen or so that I would consider non-extinct. There are lots that I remember but are gone. Some are far too explicit and would do better on Literotica but I'm too lazy.
Gwen
I didn't think those stories on the hard drive counted
Hi Erin,
I didn't think those stories on the hard drive counted. And here I was congratulating myself for getting 2 books that came to BCTS in 2009 finished.
I end with the YouTube trifecta and the web address of my YouTube channel. Like, Subscribe and Comment as you are able.
Exploring the impossibilities,
Jo Dora Webster on YouTube
Unfinished business
I have a few floundering projects myself. Stuff I just run out of steam on. I found turning a dead story into a novel helps build up the steam. I'm finally adding a new chapter to a long waiting story since I keep getting asked about it. Watch this space. If I can just keep my dog off my lap.
I like your title "meatcute". I'd never heard of "meetcute" until a few months ago I saw a book on Amazon called "The not so meet cute" and I had no idea what that meant.
Melanie
Pregnant boy
That one haunts me
hugs :)
Michelle SidheElf Amaianna
Only 200?
You surprise me Erin!
Whenever we chat you always throw me at least 3.
So I have done a count of stories that I prefer to call "work in progress" rather than "Unfinished".
272 stories!
And so little time!
Hugs
Maryanne
Oh dear
I just did a count of word files in my WIP folder tree. 2167 documents. I think that some housekeeping is required.
Ok, that does include a good number multi-part stories that I'm working on but there is a lot of dross that could be pruned but it is hard... real hard.
I did some of this last year after my Mum died(... ironically one year ago today) while I sorted her affairs out. I managed to complete more than 10 stories. Yeah, it is time to have another go but I dread to think what I'd do if I stopped having ideas for a prolonged amount of time.
Samantha
What comes after...
My advice is to really think about what you want to happen after you're gone, make your decisions, and write them down. Then appoint a literary executor to control your work in accordance with your written instructions.
I have read several accounts of authors who died leaving their stories, half-written stories, outlines and story ideas for their heirs to deal with as the heirs see fit, as they left no instructions at all. That is a large imposition on the heirs as they have to decide whether to burn (shred or delete in today's terms) the unfinished manuscripts, or whether to allow others to complete the work.
Until then, however, just do what you want to do. Finish old stories, start new ones, permanently delete any old unfinished works that you don't want others to see, whatever. Do whatever you feel like doing, in which ever sequence is best for you.
Lindsay
Earlier Blog Post
Some time ago, I commented on a post by Dorothy, about what she was working on, and gave my own list of very incomplete stories. There isn't much to update, so I'm giving the link to that post: https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog-entry/84723/what-im-working
Was the spelling of "meatcute" intentional?
-- Daphne Xu
Was the spelling of "meatcute" intentional?
Probably. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
I write in a peculiar way.
I write in a peculiar way. Most of the time I have no idea where a story is going to go until I sit down at my laptop. When I end a chapter, often the end could just be the end of the story. This way everything ends up here, finished or unfinished.
I know personally I come up with some good ideas for stories, but do not execute them in the best way as I am impatient to get the story told.
I have plenty of stories I could add another chapter or two, but won't because the interest waned.
Why don't you just upload the most complet ones over several months, then see which ones garner the most interest Erin? It would be a shame to leave them hanging in the ether.
You can prioritise which ones to work on, and at least get some of those ideas put to bed. .
Leeanna
Some authors will take 'partials and fragments' ...
... and "set them free" for others to finish, rewrite or use as 'writing prompts'. Then your ideas are not lost. The fragments no longer 'clutter your head space' and drag you down, leaving you work on what you really want to do.
If you "bundle them up" by tens or twenties and publish them here, then they won't clutter up your title-space as much as would 'hundreds' of singletons. Or a single multi-chapter work with a title like "Orphan Stories - Please Finish Us".
A novel I very much like, where one author finished another's work, is described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Star. Of course they are two of my many favorite authors.
Giving away ideas
I give away story ideas almost every day. Melanie Brown is currently working on two ideas I gave her and Maryanne Peters has dozens I supplied.
Here's two: A young man in his first experience with sexual commerce is startled to discover that the escort he has hired is a boy. But she is so pretty that he is intrigued in spite of himself. Her story is both sad and perhaps hopeful. Can John help make his Unexpected Girlfriend a real woman?
Robert works for a government organization that is so secret they removed his fingerprints before letting him find out what he's working on. Is it alien technology? Time travelers? Whatever it is, these gadgets are unlike any other technology on Earth. And some of them are dangerous in unexpected and even unbelievable ways. And now Robert has gotten way too involved with his current assignment; a lifelike Living Doll that seems to have absorbed his consciousness. Can he escape before his co-workers take him apart to see how SHE works? And is there anywhere she can go?
See? I made those both up just now. A bit of this idea, borrow some of that one, imagine a character and we're off!
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Correction
Actually Erin, I have 41 of your ideas as work in progress - about a third of what is on my plate.
But I had neglected to include some other story ideas which are just that at present - 31 of those, not yet on my plate.
Please forgive me.
I will send you a list.
Maryanne
Erin,
Erin,
I’ll take an starter idea, please…
The Very Idea or, The Hard Man
Gender dysphoria? What's that? Michael Diamonte wondered why his girlfriend would ask him about such a thing? He had to look it up, and when he found out what it meant, he didn't know whether to laugh... or scream....
Wasn't he Mickey Diamond, noted in police reports as a hard man? Didn't he have the respect of his capo and the other wise guys? How did some back-up singer in a rock-and-roll band think she had the right to make such an accusation? Angry, he sought the woman out to give her a beating, so that she would know not to say such things. Especially, where anyone else could hear them.
But they had ended up in bed together, her on top, telling him what a beautiful man he was.
Still later, in the night, he woke with her beside him. He stroked her arm, her shoulder, her cheek in the darkness. A tear ran to the corner of his eye and dripped onto the pillow. Was it true? He'd been unhappy all his life, driven himself to excel as a hard man, to climb the ranks of the gangster life, to be the man he had become.
Could an idea topple his belief in himself? Was her insight true? He lay back on the pillow, withdrawing his hand when she sighed.
If true, this idea would destroy him. Did he dare to find out if it were so. Maybe he wasn't that brave after all...
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Nice. Thank you.
Nice.
Thank you.
I know that feeling. Time
I know that feeling. Time and health have been the bane of my existence.
That being said, I'm always making trying to work on something.
Well I think everyone has unfinished stories
I have way more unfinished than finished stories. Most are just in an outline form, and I abandoned them for whatever reason, usually since I didn’t know where to take them. For me a great story is one that seems to pop into my head, and all I have to do is write it all down. Others have felt like that for the first few chapters and then I ran out of steam. For a couple of stories, when I was stuck, I thought, what is the worst thing that could happen to my protagonist and then I write something down. I finished a few stories using this method.
Hey Erin how about you…
How about you take an unfinished story and publish it as unfinished and ask your faithful readers what they could do with it? Maybe make it a competition to see if anyone out there can make a decent story out of it?
When I write stories ...
... I tend to get emotionally caught up in whatever is happening with my characters. I can handle it for a while, but if the story is more than a few chapters, and someone is dealing with some rough stuff, it kinda saps all my energy. That's not the only reason why I have a lot of unfinished stories, but it's one of them. I'm finding things tend to work out better if I keep my stories short.