Back on the Blog Chain: Not Finishing What You...

It's my turn to pick the topic for this round of the blog chain. Naturally, I have to make it a tough one:

Is there a writing project you've failed to finish? If so, why? Are you planning to return to it at some point? Alternatively, describe a book you started to read but didn't finish and why you didn't finish. You don't have to name the book.

I have a slew of partial short stories that I've abandoned, at least for now. Some of them are several years old, while others are more recent. Probably my biggest reason for abandoning them is plot--or rather, not knowing how to resolve the plot. Some of these stories no longer interest me, but there are a couple that I would like to finish and publish. There's always the possibility that I may take the story idea and rework it into something else, the way I transformed an old short story called "Antidote for a Family Feud" into "Letters to Psyche."

I have to admit I do have some abandoned novels as well. One of them is the final volume in the Season Avatars series. I wrote the first two books when I was trying to traditionally publish them, but I dropped the series when I failed to get anywhere with it and became interested in what's now the Catalyst Chronicles series. Now that I can independently publish the Season Avatars series, I've regained my interest in it. However, since I'm starting with a brand new prequel, and since I've made several changes to the world, I'm going to have to revise what's already been written anyway. So perhaps it wasn't so terrible of me to leave that first draft unfinished. Also unfinished is a NaNoWriMo project I started a few years ago about a pair of shapeshifting sisters. I've discovered NaNoWriMo, although fun, doesn't really work well for me in terms of finishing a story, not just putting 50,000 words down. Again, maybe someday in the future, when I've cleared some of my current projects from my brain, I can return to that story. While there's life, there's hope, right? And hopefully I'll have fewer abandoned projects as my writing career continues.

To follow the rest of the chain, check out what Kate said yesterday, then visit Christine's blog tomorrow.