Help! I am a chronic abandoner...

Christine Fonseca, Author

Hi all! Happy Weds. As I mentioned yesterday, Weds will regularly be dedicated to craft – either through the Blog Chain or through a series of tips. This week is Blog Chain time! And the topic is a good one, brought by Sandra, who asks:

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 took a class taught by Amy Koss. She presented the seven deadly sins of writing – including abandonment. I will never forget that class – mostly because I am SO GUILTY on this one. I have no less than four abandoned manuscripts, each with at least 20K written, on my hard drive right now. I do plan on finishing them…one day. I’m not sure why the books were ever abandoned, other than I got fickle. The stories are outlined. The books are good. The pieces I’ve shared with trusted beta readers have given me enough input to feel like they could each be written and enjoyed. And yet, they stay – half done on my hard drive.

Perhaps it is the timing factor. Perhaps they are not yet ready to be written. I know most of them were abandoned in 2010 when my mom died. It’s like I have an incredibly productive 18 mos with writing, and then stopped for too long. When I started back up with Transcend, I had a few books under contract. That has been my focus for the past two years – getting those books done. Now, with nothing under contract once the rewrites of Dominus are finished, I can refocus on writing something new, something that speaks to me. There is a freedom in that I am completely looking forward to. An excitement.

Hopefully, when I again think about Koss’s class and the deadly sins of writing, I will no longer obsess about the books laid to waste on my hard drive! Hopefully I can again talk about my productivity and the stories that have captured my heart.

What about you? Are you guilty of abandonment? For more on this topic, check Sandra’s post from yesterday and Katrina’s tomorrow