Have You Looked At What's In Your 'Ideas' File Recently?

My (writing) life was in danger of becoming an unfinished symphony.
I’m an Aries, and we love to start things. Unfortunately, finishing isn’t a strong point. I have sweaters, quilts, paintings, gardening projects….well, you get the picture. All unfinished.
Perhaps more importantly, I have a huge file on my computer of novel ideas and, even more alarming, about seven novel manuscripts in various stages of completion.
And then I signed up, as I do every year, for Nanowrimo. You know what I mean, that challenge where you try to sweat out 50,000 words, or an entire novel, in a month. Self-inflicted torture.

And I went through my ideas file to try to figure out what I’d like to work on. And found two mss that had been done to first draft in previous Nanos. And then abandoned like unwanted children.
Oh, dear, my poor babies.
Because they were actually good children, interesting plot lines, characters who sobbed on my shoulder when I told them they’d have to wait to tell their stories.
I felt like a monster.

So, I quit Nano and dusted off a couple of these unfinished stores and got to work.

And it’s going well. The poor things are so happy to see me, they just blossom with words.

My unfinished symphony of a (writing) life was highlighted by talking to a friend who was clearing out all sorts of things. “If anything happened to me, I know my kids and grandkids would just dump this stuff,” she said philosophically.

Uhmm, I started wondering what my kids would do – or think – about a series of unfinished murder mysteries with a couple of hot sex scenes thrown in.

Much better solution is to finish them (the books, not my kids) and get them out to take their chances in the big world.

As for the unfinished craft projects, well, who knows what fate awaits them?

So, have you checked what novel ideas are lurking in your 'ideas' or 'strays' file? You might find almost finished gold, right there!