I want you to picture the file where you keep your writing. Perhaps you have more than one file.
I daresay it would be wise to have backups of backups, but I’m rambling.
Back to your file (or files).
If you are anything like me, then you’ll have a well-organised USB key.
Your backups are stored on a hard drive, but you’ve been living on the wild side and haven’t backed anything up in months, if not years.
I do believe that the entire fourth and fifth drafts of my debut novel, Under His Shadow, existed in only one copy.
Such a dangerous life I lead.
Again, I digress.
The Haunting of the November Drafts
My writing file is divided into genres. Yes, I have a category for nearly every genre, though I heavily lean towards thrillers.
I mean, I even have a file ready in the eventuality that I try my hand at screenplays. (Unlikely, but I like to keep my options open.)
But there is one file I refuse to create. My USB key is overrun with half-finished, abandoned manuscripts that have nothing better to do than haunt the furthest recesses of my mind when I least expect them to.
- Nine Lives: last modified in November 2023
- The Writer’s Circle: last modified in November 2025
Do you see a pattern emerging?
Because I do.
November is National Novel Writing Month. The last push to try and power through 50K words and get the bare bones of a story down on paper.
Except that’s never worked for me.
I’m not the bare-bones kind of writer.
When I write, I complete a first draft that usually needs more trimming than padding.
The Sinister Beast in the Shadows
I know what you’re thinking. It’s that shiny new idea that’s come to whisper sweet nothings in my ear. Luring me away from my draft as soon as I exited the honeymoon phase and started shovelling through the messy middle.
Granted, that might play a role.
But most of the time, something far more sinister is at work in the shadows. That beast of a companion, Imposter Syndrome, starts rearing its ugly head. And when you hit that inevitable wall, because nobody gets through a draft without hitting some kind of roadblock, you convince yourself it’s easier for everyone to let the book mature a little. Your brain will work on it subconsciously.
Give it a week.
Ten days tops.
But ten days go by, and you still don’t know how to fight your way out of the corner you wrote yourself into. The plot knot tightens no matter which way you tug.
So, you leave it longer.
But your fingers are so used to tapping away at a keyboard that they can’t stand to be idle. What else is there to do but start another story?
The Cycle of Microfiction and Novellas
You promise yourself that it’ll only be a series of short stories. Quick wins to unblock and unburden those creative juices.
Those with the discipline to stick to microfiction start sending their pieces to literary journals. A bit of validation from industry experts is bound to help unleash that dormant creative beast in you. Or is it?
We others who believed we could write microfiction promise ourselves that it’s nothing more than a novella. Something short, but with more space for character arcs. But as that 30K words cut-off approaches, you realise yet again, you’ve started another full-length novel.
And then that niggling voice in the back of your mind starts kicking up a stink. Complaining about the lack of creative bandwidth, needing to deal with not just one, nor two, but multiple full-length novels in progress.
You smile timidly at your reflection and shrug. “I’ve been pruning.”
How to Overcome Writer’s Block Using a Creative Compost Heap
Pruning? Pruning?
But you’re a writer, not a gardener.
That may be so, but as someone who has more unfinished stories than she cares to count (some dating to my days in secondary school…), I firmly believe that no writing is ever wasted.
Each sentence crafted, whether the story came to fruition or not, served to strengthen your writer’s muscles, to hone your voice.
That pile of unfinished projects aren’t bones in a graveyard; they are a creative compost heap, decomposing to feed your next project.
If I am truly honest, my debut novel, Under His Shadow, wouldn’t be the story it is today, hadn’t it been for the multiple times I cast it aside to work on other things.
Granted, it would have been a different story; maybe it was a good story, but as one of my beta readers said:
I originally read Under His Shadow as a beta reader; it was already a great book then, but holy moly, the changes that have been made took the book from a 4-star to a 5-star!! – Goodreads review
Now, as a writer, I can’t ask for higher praise than that. Knowing that the fifth and final draft was truly worth the blood and sweat, and I’m not going to lie, tears…
But then, I always knew Under His Shadow had the core of a great story (am I allowed to boast?), but if I hadn’t given the characters the necessary time to evolve and develop, then I’d have been sitting on a great, but poorly executed story.
And for me, I’d rather it stay unpublished than not reach my own (perhaps overly high) standards.
Two Steps to Resurrect (or Release) Your Old Manuscripts
But how do you know whether a story is truly for the compost heap or can be salvaged?
- Change your medium: One of my favourite things to do with unfinished manuscripts is to read them, in PDF or EPUB format on my Kindle (so I can’t edit as I read). The aim? To find where the pulse dropped off, if it dropped off at all. To see where I lost interest. Sometimes, rereading a manuscript away from the computer rekindles the embers of a long-forgotten flame.
- Harvest or Bury: Other times, you realise there’s no heartbeat, and you salvage what you can, be it a character, a setting or a specific scene.
But one thing I’d love all writers to normalise is that not everything we write is meant for publication. Sometimes, some stories are just meant to teach us something we couldn’t learn from books, or perhaps put into practice something we saw another writer achieve with brilliance.
It is ok to leave a story buried. It doesn’t make you less of a writer.
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