How many manuscripts are at the bottom of *your* drawer?

So far just my UF Novel that I trunked as un-fixable elephant fecal matter. Keeping it though just in case I ever feel the urge to write another UF Novel. I'll polish that turd one day I swear!

zero...I have one I need to stop hangin around here to finish, then I start another book or two

as for your ten, maybe some are fixable long-term, maybe you have an issue with committing or finishing you need to deal with, or maybe they are just dead ventures......John Saul made headlines for the advance his first novel got, but it was book 7, the first six nobody would touch with bleach and a hazmat suit. Multiple trunked books is not at all uncommon.

As for the 3 possibilities above, and if your books SHOULD be trunked....that's something you'd have to sort out for yourself.

I just went through my manuscripts' folder and I have three incomplete manuscripts and five or six projects that are in my plans but not started just yet, and about 20 of them finished, but none of my projects are forever unfinished or abandoned. I am 70k words into a new manuscript I started on July 10, 2011 and 28k into another one I started on August 3, and I am working on those. Next, I am going to work on two of my incomplete projects since I started working on two projects at the same time last month and so far it's worked like a charm. The only way any of my projects will ever be abandoned is if I decide to stop writing forever, something I will never do, unless I can no longer use my hands or my voice to get words into a word processor, or unless I die. I put projects on hold when I find myself depressed and unable to write anything, but once I snap out of that I go right back to work, so no, none of my projects will be forever abandoned. I like to finish what I started, especially manuscripts. Otherwise I feel incomplete, like there's something pending, waiting, and I don't like that.

I only have two at the moment. Trying to decide if the were-penguin shaggy dog story deserves to become a novel...

About five. Three of them I know for sure I'm going to finish.

I'm sure most of my unfinished trunked stuff will be taken out someday and finished. Right now I have a dozen or so viable novels, along with probably twice as many story ideas that could go any length. They're all just sitting around in various unfinished forms or in my notes document. They'll all get done eventually, they just have to start shouting loud enough for me to pay attention.

None. I have a lot of files full of story ideas that I'll eventually get around to working on or finishing, but I don't have any that are "trunked" in the sense that they are complete and utter rubbish that should never see the light of day.

I have 6 "trunked," plus the one I'm currently working on/almost finished. Two of those trunked ones were written when I was a preteen, so I consider them unsalvageable. Two others I just fell out of love with and so never bothered to finish/edit them. And the other two I plan on going back to, someday...maybe.

On one hand it is a bit depressing to have such a high number of completed/nearly completed/abandoned projects, but then, I literally started writing books when I was a child. So I pretty much consider everything before my current novel as practice, stories I wrote both for fun and to teach myself how to write.

I guess all if them.

I have 3 that are infinished and abandoned. I'm just stuck on where to go with them.

I have 1 finished that is a trunk novel. It just requires too much work and thought to fix.

Then I have one that I was subbing, but after 60+ rejections it might as well be abandoned.

And then I have 4 other sequels to that one that are unfinished and probably will stay unfinished if the one can't be sold.

Mharvey said:

Today I went back and actually counted all the drafts of novels I've gotten 50%-100% the way through and abandoned for one reason or another. That number is depressingly high at 10.

Click to expand...

Six.

I like all of them, and if I live long enough, I'll probably finish them.

All except the one about a dystopian future when the world is run by religious nutcases. Seems that events moved faster than I expected by some 20 years.

Well, it depends on how we define "unfinished". I'd say three.

One fantasy novel that I heart, but it's just out of control... I was 50k in and I felt all I'd accomplished was worldbuilding and getting my MC married off to a slightly less awful ass than her father was. I do want to resucitate that story someday, but for now it's moping around my hard drive.

One completed, many times re-written, novel that needs yet another re-write. I'd like to come back to this someday, but it's taken up more of my writerly energies than I think any one MS should, so it's shelved for now.

One mostly-completed rough draft that I think just needs some extra scenes inserted and then the old polish-polish. But the plot involves a suicide attempt, and someone very close to me just committed suicide. I think it's a good story, but I just can't read it, let alone edit it right now.

If only we had world enough, and time...

Right now, I don't have any abandoned manuscripts. I did have one that I didn't work on for a long time, but I finished that, and I am now 35K on a novel that will probably never see the light of day. I also have other ideas for short stories and novels that I haven't gotten around to writing yet.

ABOUT 7 O____O. It's my goal to finish all!!!!!!!

I don't have a *drawer* lol but I do have a *trunk* and in it are 2 completed manuscripts, one that I shopped around to agents but never got any where, it needs to be revised. And I have another that I completed but lost interest in it when a good beta friend of mine ripped it to shreds.

And then 1 have 20K of another novel that I loved, but after a long break from writing wasn't able to find my way back into it.

So, that's a total of three, and I plan to finish the one and edit and polish the other two.

I have 8, but two of them are being read by agents. I never abandon them completely, but let them "rest" between revisions.

Er. Four? Maybe five? Uh...six?

I do plan on finishing four of them when I'm not being bogged down by the series I started.

Probably 5 or 6 that have enough meat in them to be considered finish-able stories. I also find that if i know a story is truly dead (thankfully not too many of those) I pick parts of it off I think I may need for other stories, kind of like still picking at a turkey even after you're full. A lot of times I can salvage big chunks from long dead stories.

Like Shadow Ferret, I have a totally completed trunk novel that probably requires too much work to fix. But I still love the characters in it, so who knows, one day I may get around to resurrecting that bird.

shelved and trunked, whatever, I only have one complete ms that's put away but to be revised in the future...maybe? I've got PLENTY of stories, but they're either unfinished or middle school efforts.

None! (Feel free to hate me now. ) Even before I was writing for publication, every novel and novella got finished eventually, edited and put on my website. Some of it was fanfic, some original. The one that came the closest to never being seen again was my 2009 NaNoWriMo effort. A fanfic, the only time I did a fanfic for NaNo. It was torture to write and just didn't make a damn bit of sense. I did finish it (out of pure bloody-mindedness), but I came very close to not doing any more with it after that. But in the end I did edit it - and by edit I mean I cut 30k of its 50k words and rewrote the entire second half. It was good discipline for me, as I've never had to do such extensive revisions to anything before.

Unfinished? None. I've started eleven books and finished eleven although none are published.

Somewhere between 4 and 6 - it's hard to be sure, since I have a bunch of half-finished stabs at the same concept. These are all pre-NaNoWriMo efforts, before I learnt how to plan out a novel and finish it!

I'll probably go back and mine them for ideas one day - I'll need something to write after I finish this current trilogy!

There's eight finished (but hopelessly broken) novels, two semi-completed ones, five scripts and enough kipple to make anyone depressed at the sight of it.

Also, the bottoms of drawers can only take so much weight, and sooner or later they will collapse under the strain - I think that there's a metaphor in there somewhere...