I recently opened the “unfinished drafts” section of my blog and discovered that I had 52 unfinished posts in various states of completion. Some of these resulted from dumping a quick idea using the WordPress app on my phone, little more than three of four words to be fleshed out later. Some are just a title, waiting for the post to arrive.
Some are near-complete or actually complete blog posts I never got around to posting, usually because they were a) incredibly negative, b) incredibly risky, or c) written during a week with a serious anxiety flare up and being ‘out in public’ with ideas wasn’t palatable to me.
I’ve logged all 52 titles here, from the evocative to the mundane, to give you a glimpse as a blog that might-have-been once upon a time. Reading them aloud makes for an oddly evocative prose poem, especially once you get to the last two entries.
1. Untitled
2. Short Fiction Friday: The Seventeen Executions of Signore Don Vashta
3. Book Recs: Profit First
4. Untitled
5. Untitled
6. Untitled
7. Links
8. Untitled
9. Thesis Month
10. The Empathy Gap and Writers In November
11. Untitled
12. The Holy Trinity of Process Books for Writers
13. Untitled
14. The Switch
15. Holding Patterns
16. Untitled
17. 2018 Reading: My Favourite Reads
18. The Uncool Influences
19. Untitled
20. Every Book Has Three Stories Attached (or, How To Talk About Your Writing Without Boring People)
21. Untitled
22. I Just Watched Kenny Omega Save Ibushi, and It’s Making Me Think About Storytelling
23. Untitled
24. Untitled
25. Untitled
26. Untitled
27. Untitled
28. Untitled
29. Untitled
30. SMAX #175: No-One Can Stop A Gang Who Can Fly
31. RUOK Day
32. Enid Blyton Post
33. What Could You Get Written By The End of 2018?
34. When Is A Series Not A Series?
35. Untitled
36. Hell Track Project Diary: Day Six (ish)
37. Some Thoughts On Masters Of The Universe
38. How To Use The Philosophy Of Circuit Training To Level Up Your Writing
39. Ask Not What Your Readers Can Do For You
40. Untitled
41. Untitled
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43. The World Doesn’t Want You To Write
44. Things You Should Be Going To In June/July If You’re In Brisbane And Into Spec Fic
45. The World Doesn’t Want You To Read
46. Untitled
47. Untitled
48. Untitled
49. Putting Together A Monthly Plan
50. Untitled
51. Your Book Is Dead. Move On.
52. I Am Surprised When Someone Reads My Work
Three of these are from 2016, 13 from 2917, 13 from 2018, 15 from 2019, 7 from 2020, and one from 2021. My plan for the rest of September is to go through and rescue what needs rescuing, kill what needs killing, and clear the space for future work.
ADDENDUM FOR PATREON: Most of this probably won’t get a finished version on the blog, but if there’s something you’d like to see in its rough form, drop a number in the comments and I’ll post it here in the Patreon for folks to poke at.