Old Unfinished Stories

So, I was poking around my unfinished stories, having just finished a new addition to a chapter series (which is funny, because I specifically did not want to do chapter stories, and that one wasn't going to be one.)

Anyway, so I am going through my unfinished stories to polish up an old one and maybe release it, I read one, and it's like the hottest story I read in awhile. I write for myself, and I remember writing it as I read it, but I had forgotten it when it sat in my old files.

Anyone else pull out an old story to rework and find it super hot? Or am I just odd?

Ferax said:

Anyone else pull out an old story to rework and find it super hot? Or am I just odd?

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I doubt you're odd that way (maybe some other way, I don't know). Why did you leave it behind?

Ferax said:

Anyone else pull out an old story to rework and find it super hot? Or am I just odd?

Click to expand...

It's rare for me to drop a story - if it's not working at the time I'm ruthlesss - it will usually get binned, even if ideas get reworked later.

But I stop writing one a year or so back, not for writing reasons but personal ones (my then muse packed up her bags and left, sob); but I recently revisited it, put the leading lady in a different dress, and am now finishing it off.

Mainly because it was the first to feature one of my now better established male protagonists, and also coz it had some not bad writing.

So it's a bit like second hand muse...

I'm not sure about 'super hot'. The part-written story on which I stubbed my toe today had not progressed that far. But it was a piece of class writing. And the two lead characters were more than just engaging. But I don't remember writing it. And I don't remember where it was supposed to go next. Oh, well ....

I've run across old abandoned drafts, sometimes I say *wow I know where this should go* and sometimes I finally terminate them. I went on a hunt through old backups last year, so I doubt there are any starters or incompletes outside my master file now.

I just wish I could find a couple of story ideas I know I worked out in outline but can no longer find.

I've found older unfinished works hot but not super hot.

I've got at least 10 stories for which I've written anywhere from a few sentences to over 10 pages and not finished yet. Some of those stories I started last December. I don't plan to finish them until I finish a couple of series I am working on right now.

But I do go back to them and look at them, and it gets me excited to think about finishing them and publishing them.

My Nude Day Contest story this year ("Galaxy of Terra") I wrote five years ago but for some reason or another found dissatisfying at the time. Looking at it again I realized it wasn't a bad story really, I just didn't have the technical skill at the time to make it more compelling. A few extra drafts turned it into a reasonably pleasing entry, and contest readers seemed to respond well to it.