♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦
Topic #422
How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
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Oh, that writing queue of mine… At least I am aware that other writers are going through the same! I have notebooks with ideas, half-started idea notebooks, files on the computer instead of paper, finished work that needs rework, and nearly-finished drafting work. It’s a mishmash of various stages. When you first start out in writing, there is a flood of ideas and discerning what will work and what won’t isn’t the easiest task. Afterall, the state of overwhelm the flood creates leaves us vulnerable to our blind spots.
Yes, I keep old ideas I haven’t done much with since I scribbled a note about them decades ago. Why not? They might be relevant at some point. You never know what will strike you as worth penning again. Not to mention that with years more experience, bringing it to draft is a far better attempt than taking it on earlier in one’s career.
If you look behind me in the more recent videos on my YouTube series, you’ll see binders and notebooks. While one of those is an album from my trip to Ireland, the others are paper and pen books. The green and blue binders, specifically, are full stories I penned in the genre of high fantasy. After years of working, the decision to rewrite these stories as Trailokya Tales became more viable. It just makes sense. If I took on writing high fantasy, I would be drown in the sea of voices (good or bad), and I’d be leaving a property that is uniquely my own.
How many books are in that series? I am not quite certain yet. You see, I am looking at finishing up the sequel to OP-DEC (OP-GHO: Operation Ghost). Now that that one has sat, it is time for a couple revisions, and finding an editor to make it pop. Once I figure out all of that, I will spend the time on the Aghart Chronicles, as I have come to call them. There’s a lot to work out in this transition, and much to expand with Trailokya. I’m still thinking about who would carry over from Maiel’s trilogy, if anyone.
Let’s say that I have about 4 books to add to the chronicles and then OP-GHO. That’s a total of 5 books in the queue with a solid start and my imperative focus to finish them. Past that, I have one idea for another historical drama, and then a sea of unfinished, reedy ideas. The absolute total that I could have in my queue is approximately 20-25. Some of them may just end up scripts, but that is the estimate either way.
Now you know why I feel a bit overwhelmed and as if I cannot put pen to paper, so to speak. With my neurodivergence, the anxiety builds high, and here we are paralyzed. Eventually, I will clear some projects off my plate. That often feeds into a high focus period in which work gets done by the droves. So just hang in there with me. Remember that I play with the ideas in my head for a long time before I put them down, and I just need to feel I have time once the idea stage is settled. There will always be more from me!
Let’s click on the links below to see what the other authors hold in their queue. Don’t forget to add your email to the mailing list via the subscribe box (top right on desktop, scroll down on phone). See you next time!
There’s one thing that writing short pieces on Medium has taught me. Not every idea has to be a novel, I’m using up all my half-ideas in flash and short stories. It’s changed the whole way my creative process works.
I used the a few of the characters from a book that will never be published in a couple of totally unrelated short stories (8 years later.) You never know when the right time to revive old ideas will strike!