An Embarrassment of WIPs

New Words - 557 + 1051 + 617 + 397
Poetry - 0
Total Words - 2622
Editing Hours - 0
Paragraphs of Notes - 4

So ... despite last Monday being a holiday, I finally started to ease into that much needed writing schedule I’ve been yearning for. I wrote 500+ words on Monday, twice that on Tuesday, nothing except updating my journal (a week’s worth) on Wednesday, and Thursday ... Okay, Thursday I did park my butt in my office at the appointed hour, but that was it. And no poetry at all last week.

I did print out some stuff to work on during nap time (which didn’t happen - the writing, not nap time). I just kind of ground to a halt. The mind was willing but the fingers were weak. I got hit by a dose of writer’s apathy and I’m still struggling with it. And while I did lose three days to the writer’s apathy, I did start to rally on the weekend and get a few more words in.

But there’s another reason I didn’t get as much done as I could have last week and I can’t for the life of me decide if this is a good excuse or a really stupid excuse, but here goes. You be the judge:

I have too many projects to choose from.

I have a folder on the desktop of my computer that’s labeled Working On. In this folder is 28 document files - all stories that are in various stages of being done. Some just need a little tweeking, some need a lot of work. A couple are stories I started for the weekly BSB prompt and never got off the ground, but I want to finish anyway.

But wait! There’s more. There are also 8 sub-folders that contain a total of 143 files of stuff I’ve been working on. That’s a lot of WIPs to choose from, don’t you think? And that’s not even dipping into the folders on my desktop marked Books, Short Stories, or Poetry.

The Books folder, for instance, holds all of my NaNo efforts as well as folders for several different series I have plans for. Not just novels, but series of novels. I’ve completed the NaNoWriMo challenge 10 times and only 1 of those novels have seen the light of day. Shame on me! But it’s no wonder I’m not getting anything done, I have so many irons in the fire you can’t even see the fire.

So, what am I to do?

I’m going to change the name of the Working On folder to To Be Worked On and maybe even store it on a USB stick to remove temptation. I will create a new folder called Currently Working On for my desktop, and in it I will limit myself to no more than six WIPs, including the novel I’m hoping to have done in time for Christmas. And if I’m going to have a prayer of that happening, I’m going to have to seriously up my game.

Expect to see the New Words at the top of this post divided between Short Fiction and Novel next week. And it would really help if Book Bub would stop offering me so many good books to read. And maybe the new season of television could be put off for a couple of months.

And at this point I really have to wonder, what was I doing with all my time over the last few months?