Cleaning House

This may not help, but I tend to let stories develop in my head before I start writing them. In other words, by the time I start setting down text, I'm ready to go all the way to the end. At that point it's not a question of whether I can finish but whether I can stop myself.

If I were you, I would finish the latest story, then the next latest, and so on. You may stop before you reach the oldest, but by then you may not want to finish the rest. Once you lose the spark that got you started on a piece, it's hard to get it back. A good writer knows when to shelve a piece.

For the most part, I finish a first draft of a story after I start it. There are a few where things just fell apart, and those were left unfinished simply because it was easier to start another story (and finish it) rather than stew about the one that was going nowhere.

I do have this problem sometimes of finishing a first draft, and then not remembering to go back and polish it up. There are at least three stories on my computer right now, in fact, where that's the case. I know about those three because I was skimming through my files and saw titles to stories I'd forgotten about.

If I start it, I finish it. I do this largely because of Heinlein's Rules, but I also do it because I believe writers learn best and fastest when they make themselves finish the hard stories, the ones that have problems, that take more work and effort.

You have to discipline yourself to finish the stories. They have no value sitting unfinished. Set a basic goal of getting one done a week and getting it out.

I keep that sort of work in my "idea file" - but I finish one before I really and truly start on another.

I like to jot down the good stuff that doesn't belong in my current work: great opening hook lines, super plot twists, intriguing characters, "what if" plot possibilities, satisfying endings, etc. but I do not work on them all at once.

Pick a story and go with it - two if you need to swtich off to avoid The Blank Screen of Death syndrome - and go from there. If you have a lot of good ideas, try incorporating several into one story instead of one-idea-per-story.

Your mileage may vary - it works for me, but we all do it differently.