I found my folder of story ideas as I was cleaning my office last week. I was shocked by the number of unfinished drafts in there, including several fairly well-written chapters of a romance novel. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t always print my story drafts, so I know there are more on my old desktop computer, yet more on my laptop, scattered bits in notebooks, and even a couple here in my blog drafts folder. And let’s not forget the many that are now lost forever, because they were unwisely stored on computers and floppy disks of yore. So sad. A moment of silence in memoriam, please.
I suppose the bright side is that I won’t run out of writing ideas any time soon. However, I can’t continue to leave so many things unfinished. It’s a bad habit that I need to break, the sooner the better. So I’m going to try a simple solution. I’m going to work my way backward, doggedly finishing each one (on second thought, maybe not all of the novels, because there are quite a few, but at least the majority of songs, rhymes, and short stories).
First will be the other story I wrote for the Highlights fiction contest. It’s done and only needs to be edited. Since I can work on the stories in any order I choose, next will be a fantasy story I wrote years ago. That story amuses me because it’s so messed up. I originally dictated it into my computer using voice recognition software. I remember how hard I tried to get the program to work. I read page after page of “teaching text” into it, just like the instructions said to do, but the program never really learned to recognize my speech. The draft of that story is littered with nonsensical phrases. Some of them will be easy to change. For example, globally replacing “ferry” with “fairy” will be a good start! I’m sure, though, that deciphering some of it will prove too difficult, and I’ll have to do a lot of rewriting. Also, while the story has a beginning, middle, and end, there are still holes to be filled. It’s will take a lot of time to finish it, but I think it will be worth the effort.
Finishing the stories is my primary goal, but I would also like to see some of them published, if possible. So I’m also going to have to do some research about markets. I hope to find some editors interested enough to tell me what I’m doing wrong. If that doesn’t work, I guess I’ll look for a writing group.
But I don’t want to get bogged down in future details. All I’m going to worry about now is polishing up the children’s story. So, off I go to work on that.