Abandoned W.I.P.s

[juelz4sure]

I just have a couple questions for authors and would be authirs.How many W.I.P.s have you walked away from, why and do you plan to pick those W.I.P.s up again in the future or are they just kind of dead?

I have one that I've kind if abandoned because my lap top crashed and I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it back, even if I do it just doesn't feel the same as it did. I don't know though...

 

[Droflet]

In developing my novel I wrote and binned three and a half novels. Hey, we learn by doing, right?

 

[Juliana]

Incomplete:

1 sci-fantasy YA that I intend to go back to as soon as I finish the first draft of book 2 of my urban fantasy YA series. (probably early 2017 - around 35k written)
1 UF YA that I want to go back to after I finish both the above and books 3/4 of my series. (so only in 2018 - around 20k written but needs a full rewrite)
1 weird time-travel/fantasy/comedy/adventure YA thing that I'd like to rework as middle grade eventually. (no idea when though - around 20k written)


Complete:

I have three completed middle grade novels in Portuguese that I'm never going back to because I switched over to writing for English language markets, and they're very much 'local flavor' and not really translatable.

I have two more completed middle grades that I'd like to get back to and rewrite at some point. One of them was planned as a trilogy, and has potential to be upped to YA. On the 'back-burner' at present, simmering away. (for the trilogy, perhaps around 2018/19; the other, who knows?)

I have a trunked novel that was first written as YA and then rewritten as middle grade. I don't think it's worth fixing – it's too deeply flawed – but I learnt a lot about plot tightening in the process of moving from YA to MG, so it was worth the time I spent on it! Also, I've already stolen a few ideas/characters from it, so am slowly picking it clean of things I liked in it.


NOTE: Yes, I really do plan my writing that far out. Writing, for me, is the long game, so I'm happy to put things aside and say, 'see you in a year'.

 

[Locrian]

I had a fantasy novel I started when I was 15, I planned it out but later decided that the concept objectively sucked. I realised it was a story better told visually, I don't have the means to work in a visual medium anyway to even begin to start overhauling it, and I don't have the interest for a project of that size anyway. There was another, a vampire story I started before the vampire boom of a few years ago, and then lost interest in it as I got bored with all the crappy vampire fiction out there.

 

[Dan Jones]

Good thread!

I have two completed novels that are currently sitting dormant.

The first one is a football-themed murder mystery set in a post-apocalyptic East End of London. It needs a thorough rewrite, and I kind of want to go back to it, but I don't see how I can make it workable. But hopefully I will figure it out because I still think the central conceit is really original.

The second is an epic fantasy that got some very good reaction from beta readers, but came back with one or two fatal flaws (the main character! Argh!) and, having drafted it about 8 times, I decided I needed to do something else. I'd really like to go back to this one day and complete the series (I started book 2 and made it a few thousand words in), but I think I'm not going to attempt a series until I've got some other accomplishments under my belt soon.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I have genuinely one trunked novel - it's too young for what I write. Will I go back to it? Maybe one day if the mood takes me. There's some quite cool stuff in it.

Incomplete, I probably have two. A novella which really only needs its final polish when I get the chance and a YA that I'll get around to revisiting once more and then seek a home for at some stage. Otherwise, everything is pretty active.

 

[Stewart Hotston]

both novels in a two part series. Love the story but it would need junking and starting from scratch to make it work...one day maybe but probably not! They were the first books I wrote more than a decade back and given that they probably deserve to be left in the ether as a testament that getting that first book written is good but then move on.

 

[reiver33]

I'm currently working through my 'set aside' pile - 3 linked sf stories and an undead policeman tale (if we're talking longer than short stories), which is how I've just 'finished' Not Here, Not Now (36k).

I'm really bad for having an idea and writing until I can 'see' the ending, at which point 'just' getting the rest down on paper looses part of it's luster...

 

[Jo Zebedee]

both novels in a two part series. Love the story but it would need junking and starting from scratch to make it work...one day maybe but probably not! They were the first books I wrote more than a decade back and given that they probably deserve to be left in the ether as a testament that getting that first book written is good but then move on.

I don't know. I see that advice a lot. I released my first book and it's doing pretty well at the moment.

 

[Stewart Hotston]

Mine isn't fit to publish! I love the story but when I reread it periodically the language is overripe and the structure is all wrong. I'd love to rerun it now but I've got so much else to write!

 

[SilentRoamer]

I'm a bit different to a lot of the writers on here.

With the exception of reviews on my blog the stuff I am writing at the moment is not for public consumption yet. I write the stories for myself because I enjoy writing - I have a very good and well paid job and it's not like I need the extra money so there are literally no financial pressures on me to write anything. I kind of feel like if I HAD to write for a living that I would lose the enjoyment somewhat.

That being said I do want to be published at some point in my life I just feel like at the moment I have other things to do and the writing is just a nice hobby. Maybe as I wind down from work and start looking at retirement options I might start really getting to grips with what I have written.

So pretty much everything I write gets shelved at some point even if it's completed!

 

[SilentRoamer]

I am only in my early 30s though so won't be retiring for at least a few years (Hey I can hope right!)

 

[Wruter]

I can't go back to any of the things I've abandoned because I've deleted them all. Roughly two completed novels, two completed novellas and a handful of beginnings. I just didn't see the point in keeping them if I didn't like them. But I'm now trying to follow the example of others here and holding onto things in case they can be reworked somehow.

 

[zmunkz]

I have one "finished" 115K sci-fi/fantasy novel set aside. It was my first book, but I consider it just a learning exercise. Too much done too poorly to have any commercial value. I doubt I'll go back to it.

Working on my second novel now... It remains to be seen if this one goes on that practice pile too, or if this could be marketable. I'm not in any rush.

 

[Nick B]

No WIP left behind! (unless you include ideas that never got past scribbled notes or an odd paragraph)

 

[ratsy]

I have only finished one novel so far, and started the sequel. But for this years NaNo, I dusted off an old WIP that I stopped at 20K words, and started over again, with most of the main plot points, just made it better (I hope) And so far I'm at 43K for that book. So who knows what you can do with those trunked books. Don't toss them! Inspiration may hit one day

 

[Vaz]

I have one fantasy WiP finished, which I won't go back too, but I will strip it's carcass like a literary vulture and use some of the tasty ideas and magic systems in a new story.

Other than some sekrit stories I haven't finished much else, had a few ideas that I started but wasnt ready to tackle yet so I just deleted them.

 

[Phyrebrat]

The first one is a football-themed murder mystery set in a post-apocalyptic East End of London. It needs a thorough rewrite, and I kind of want to go back to it, but I don't see how I can make it workable. But hopefully I will figure it out because I still think the central conceit is really original.

Abeg! I Beta-shotgun this!

pH

 

[Theophania Elliott]

Oh, loads. Mostly written before I realised that if I don't do a proper plan, I will get 20,000 words in and have no idea what comes next - or even if anything comes next.

Some of them I will probably go back to at some point, and some I won't. One thing I've learned as I've got older (and older... and older) is that sometimes it's best to just abandon something that isn't working and probably won't ever work, rather than spending ever more time on in trying to make it work. Also, if you aren't getting paid, you aren't legally obliged, and you aren't having fun, why are you doing it?

Current project is subtitled "This Is The One You Will Finish Or Else."

 

[Scarfy]

I wrote an entire follow-up to H1NZ, my horror novel in which an alien pathogen causes all humans and animals on Earth to start mutating into plant-like entities. H1NZ followed a group of survivors who discovered they were immune to the virus and were trying to find someway to rebuild their lives. The original novel did not have a happy ending, at all.

H1NZ-2 went some way to finding a cure, and allowing the world to be restored. After writing the 90,000 word rough draft, I decided halfway through the first rewrite that I didn't want to do a sequel after all, so binned it off. Literally deleted the manuscript and the backups..!