Abandoned WIPs?

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

Anyone else have a tendency to jump between multiple works in progress?

I've got a nasty habit of planning out more stories than I ever finish. Often abandoning a story that's halfway or even almost completely done in order to get started on the new idea. Sometimes I'll end up revisiting abandoned WIPs and get back into it and manage to finish or at least make significant progress on the work. But like just this week I told myself that I'd finish up something original only to get completely sidetracked by a spiderman fanfiction that my hands are just itching to type out.

Is this normal?

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't know if it's normal, but I do this all the time. I must have about 50 stories that I've started in one way or another but are unfinished. When the inspiration strikes me I will open one of them and write something, then I will move on to something else.

 

[oggbashan]

Typically I have between five and ten current WIPs. It depends which one is either for a competition or demands to be finished.

But I can be distracted by a new idea that joins the WIPs.

 

[KeithD]

If I'm working on a longer piece, as I am now (the 8th book in the Hardesty series), I'll let shorter story ideas intrude so that they aren't bugging me while I work on the longer work. Two stories popped up this week, for instance, and I went ahead and drafted them (but didn't polish them) before going back to the Hardesty book.

The longer work isn't being abandoned, though. I haven't abandoned any story--yet--that I've started writing on.

 

[oggbashan]

Abandoned? When I thought I was about to die shortly, I posted all my WIPs as oggbashan stew parts 1 to 4. I know have as many drafts as I had then.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

At those times when I have several WIPs at once, I'm okay with it. I write this stuff because I want to, and I have plenty of time to do it. It can be fun to jump from one fictional construct to an entirely different one. When motivation dwindles on one or more, I can usually find one on which to make progress.

 

[MelanieShaman]

Yep. I gave up on love and drama but started a new piece... and finished it. I'm also rewriting my sisters series... changing a bunch of stuff. I just need to delete all the old parts... just a pain to go through all that.

 

[MrPixel]

My workbench is covered in abandoned WIPs. But not my writings folder. I do have one story 13 chapters deep that I haven't worked on since early last fall; it's not "abandoned" per se, its "what do I do with this?" since one of the running subplots is a prohibited topic on LitE. Of course the story can be reworked to work without it, but it wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

 

[SimonDoom]

I should clarify: I don't regard any of my WIPs to be abandoned. They're either on hold or in progress . . . slowly.

 

[oggbashan]

I should clarify: I don't regard any of my WIPs to be abandoned. They're either on hold or in progress . . . slowly.

Except for one from 1996, so are all mine.

The 1996 one was started for a Yahoo Adult Group, now defunct, and could never have been a story for Literotica.

 

[BiscuitHammer]

I've got so many unfinished stories languishing by the wayside that they're probably praying for King Moonracer to come and take them away.

I keep promising myself (and them) that I'll get back to them. And I do mean it. I just never quite actualize, even though I have new and good ideas for them.

So yes, very guilty of neglect, right here...

 

[TertiusHuman]

Yup

I have a folder filled with short stories, some just the basic idea, some of them written up to around 70-80% completion, and then there are the two novels . . .

And that is just my writing, I am not even going to talk about my bracelet weaving and sketch pad.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

I have about a dozen stories in various states of production--some a few pages, one about 80% complete. I occasionally think about them and spend an hour or a day on them, so most I do not consider "abandoned." But there are a few I don't recall the impetus for writing, and I doubt I will ever get back to them in this lifetime.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Every one of my stories these last two years has been a side project. Some have been side projects off other side projects.

I will get back to the WIP eventually - there's only one, and it's a couple of thousand in, so it got legs...

 

[ElectricBlue]

Yup

I have a folder filled with short stories, some just the basic idea, some of them written up to around 70-80% completion, and then there are the two novels . . .

And that is just my writing, I am not even going to talk about my bracelet weaving and sketch pad.

A sketch pad is okay - by definition, a sketch is a completed work. It's the painting that's the problem, not the sketch .

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Anyone else have a tendency to jump between multiple works in progress?

Constantly, but rather than ‘abandoned’, I think of them as ‘postponed’.

 

[Voboy]

Old business before new.

I know that, for myself, if I let a story get leapfrogged once I've started it, my odds of ever returning to it are VERY nil. The exception is my SF series, where I regularly take breaks and then pick back up again.

 

[HeyAll]

I've had several that I've abondoned but plan to get back to someday.

Some ideas are great, but when you start writing, there are aspects that don't make much sense and/or need work.

That's the downside of not outlining. I start writing when I love the premise and know the key points. Sometimes that gets me into trouble.

 

[titusfabulous]

I once wrote 130,000 words of a novel. And it still wasn't finished (I was prolific in my younger youth). I haven't touched it in at least 10 years. I quit to start other novels, two which I did finish. So... yay?

 

[TertiusHuman]

A sketch pad is okay - by definition, a sketch is a completed work. It's the painting that's the problem, not the sketch .

But you see, the sketches aren't complete, that is the whole problem for me. None of my WIP projects are complete, not even the jig I started to make to help me with weaving bracelets

 

[shakna]

Plenty, but nothing is ever truly abandoned. I've got a few dozen things that are anywhere between a single line idea all the way out to a hundred thousand words. I always come back to them.

Just today, I double the length of something that I hadn't touched since last November, and added a single paragraph to something from December. "Natural Twenty" was a story of mine that languished untouched for six months, to suddenly be completed in a day.

I learned a long time ago that the moment I delete a file or throw out a notebook or something along those lines, is the moment when I figure out what was needed or inspiration strikes, etc.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

There is always a new idea lurking in my mind. I have over a hundred stories I started that are now just sitting around and I haven't even looked at in ages. Will I ever finish them? Probably not. Will I try? Of course, unless I reread what I wrote and decide it's crap.

 

[Winter_Fare]

I bounce between stories and poems as the mood takes me. Nothing ever feels finished. I forced the ending/conclusion on both my lit series, otherwise they'd have gone on forever, soap opera style.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

Anyone else have a tendency to jump between multiple works in progress?

I've got a nasty habit of planning out more stories than I ever finish. Often abandoning a story that's halfway or even almost completely done in order to get started on the new idea. Sometimes I'll end up revisiting abandoned WIPs and get back into it and manage to finish or at least make significant progress on the work. But like just this week I told myself that I'd finish up something original only to get completely sidetracked by a spiderman fanfiction that my hands are just itching to type out.

Is this normal?

YEs. I have
60 Story ideas that range from a sentence or two to a couple of paragraphs
90 WIP that are anywhere between a rough draft and almost done
21 That are in various stages of being edited
1 that needs a beta reader/proofreader
10 that need to be posted to one or more of the sites I post stories on.
29 Stories that I have decided I will not finish/publish for assorted reasons, though sometimes I do use parts of those stories in other stories.

I thinks it's safe to say most authors have multiple projects going at any time.