So, motivated by finding that USB drive, I have gone through all of my copious backups, and sorted ALL of my wips into a single Scrivener file. (Well, not all - there’s quite a few that have only ever existed on paper, and this doesn’t include filk and comic scripts, and this is only things where I’ve actually started a writing file, not outlines and commentfic and bunnies and notfic, and my entire Stargate/Supernatural period in the mid-2000s seems to be missing - I’ll have to try to dig that out from the old backup drives. But this will do for now.)

There are just over 100 different stories, and well over 250,000 words! That’s almost impressive, until you realize it took about 20 years. (On the other hand, 20 years makes the total number of stories seem a little bit less terrifying?)

Every year I make a resolution to reduce that number rather than growing it, and every year I fail. So I’m going to try again this year, with a twist: the goal isn’t to finish them, it’s to either finish, post unfinished, or trash them. Surely I can do that! And maybe if they’re posted in some form, they will haunt me less, since the primary reason I write is that it makes me sad that my daydreams are trapped with me. (That means I will be posting fic on average every four days…. Maybe I will batch them by fandom.)

Per that goal, I have sorted them into categories:

1. True WIPs: These are stories where I have a fair amount left to write, and I really want to finish them properly. (10 stories, oldest is about 10 years)

2. Finish Quick: These are stories where it should take less than 1000 words to finish, and I should really just do it and post them; or at least write the 1000 words and then re-evaluate. (10 stories, oldest is over 15 years.)

3. Cauterize: There are stories where I had big plans, but on re-read, maybe the reason I stopped working on them is that I said what I wanted to say and got to a good stopping point? So the goal is to revise them to pass, and post, as finished stories without adding much more content. (8 stories, oldest is about ten years)

4. Carrot: I have written less than 1000 words of them but I really want to finish them! (17 stories, oldest is about 15 years old)

5. Post undone: I have not finished these, will not finish these, have no particular interest in finishing them anymore - many of them are in fandoms that went in a direction I was not interested in following. (71 stories in 28 fandoms, oldest is over 20 years old.)

There’s also a separate category of “things I have posted as finished even though I want to write more.” Also original stories. But those are just depressing, so we’re not going to enumerate them.

The point of the “Carrot” category is that anytime I finish and post something in category 1 or 2, I get to either move something from the “Carrot” category to the “Actual WIPs” category, or start something new and add it to the “Carrot” category, and otherwise I’m not allowed to touch that category. We’ll see if that actually works as a carrot!

Below the cut are the stories in the first four categories. They have tickyboxes! Not because the tickyboxes mean anything, I just felt like it’s been too long since there were tickyboxes.

( That's too many stories. Put some back. )

If anybody would like to mention one of the stories above in a comment, I will whine at them about how writing is hard and that story, in particular, is impossible. (The short version that all of these have in common, though, is: I only feel confident in my fanfic when I’ve been immersed in the fandom, and I can’t be immersed in 100 fandoms at at time all the time, it is not possible! So instead I finish nothing.)