When to clean up?

[Asura Levi]

Over the years I accumulated loads of plot ideas and as many unfinished works.
Some ideas changed over time, merging with each other, becoming greater and more complex.

And all the this 'work' encompasses a range of genres, high and low fantasy, cyberpunk, vampire, angels and demons, future, past, alternate realities and different worlds/universes.

Now, sometimes I wonder, what if I delete all that?

Honestly, I find it distracting sometimes. Getting back to old plots, reworking them, becoming excited in developing them just to stumble over something completely different and start all over again, leaving behind a trial of more half-baked and mutades ideas.

So, has anyone done something like that? 'Wasted' years of work because said work wasn't progressing and wouldn't? If so, how it feels like? Does it help, did you regret?

And by deleting/wasting, I mean it. Not stocking up in a hidden folder, a forgotten box. Since you will find it again.

Again, has anyone done this 'crazy' thing of destroying everything?

 

[Devor]

A piece of advice that I saw on Lifehacker was to create a "spark file." That is, take all those ideas, boil them down to their simplest form, and create a document which collects them that you can review and add to in little more than 5 minutes of time.

The argument for saving those ideas is pretty simple: A lot of your new ideas, new projects, can often be improved by those old ideas you're not doing anything with. If you're stuck, you can review your "spark file," and you might find something that fits smoothly into your new project.

That said, it's not quite the route I took. I get too many ideas, so much so that fiddling with them and developing them, by itself, is fun for me. So I created a superhero plot, with fantasy roots that spread into the past, and elements of time travel that open up sci-fi options, as a tent that I can house those extra ideas in. It works a little like a spark file, but it's mostly filled with ideas I think are great, but are maybe in an area that I have no interest or time to develop in a written form.

For instance, as part of a separate conversation, I somehow at random came up with an idea for a gun that fires two shots: The first which scans the area and sends targeting data to the second shot, which has the thrust and tech to hit its target with precision. I mean, it sounds cool to me, but I don't want to write sci fi. So WTH am I supposed to do with that? Well, it makes for an interesting supervillain.

Ooohh, shiny new idea . . . . :showoff:

 

[Penpilot]

I keep a wiki of all my ideas. I don't like to throw anything out. I'm always coming up with new ideas, but when I need a story idea, usually for a short story, out comes the wiki. I peruse until something sparks, and I'm off to the races.

I think of my idea wiki as my scrap yard, and I pull junk out of it to make new stuff.

 

[Aspasia]

I've had loads of my old old works deleted, not by choice. Harddrive crash >.< These were unfinished stories I hadn't looked at in years, bits and pieces I never thought about really and thus weren't part of my backup system. I always intended to add them but never got to it. Freeing? Well, maybe, initially. It was nice to work in a clean, empty folder with no clutter of old, honestly pretty bad story fragments from years ago. Everything was new, shiny, and higher caliber. But I wish I hadn't lost them. Yeah, they were ugly and bad and cliche. Yes, it feels great to work in a shiny clean "workspace" (I'm someone who regularly re-installs / wipes my harddrive because computer clutter deeply annoys me (after a major backup, of course!)). But among all the dreck and trash of those old stories, there were some good ideas and some good lines.

Like Penpilot, I now keep a wiki of my ideas, which feels so much cleaner than making a new document for each idea, or one long bulleted document. The wiki lets me have a clean overview, then via links allows me to expand on my ideas. When I write, I jump around a lot. I'm unable to stick to any one plot or characters for a long time, I have to try something new, start a new story, work on a weird idea, go back to the first WIP, plan some scifi, jot down a new short story idea. The wiki has been invaluable to me, I feel like despite all this jumping around I gain some forward momentum. I've tried to "force" myself to stick to one or two projects until they're finished, in a desperate effort to have some finished product, but honestly that's just not the way I write. Having fewer projects doesn't make me jump around less, I just generate a whole slew of new projects to fill the empty space. This may just be me, but on the off chance you also write like this, this is how I work

You know what I'd do? I'd put all that clutter on a flashdrive or two, CHECK the flashdrive, then delete it all off your harddrive. Put the flashdrive under your bed, or in a little-used drawer of your desk, some place you don't regularly access but so you will remember where it is. It's terrible to lose years of writing, even if you feel it's just pulling you down right now. When you get a new idea, don't feel like you have to immediately start that story now if you're scared it will slow you down on your main WIP. Use a wiki, use an organization file, jot it down in a notebook, whatever works. I mean, I can't claim that I've suddenly become much more productive or anything, I still have loads of unfinished stuff hanging about, but I feel like it's better organized, and I have more control over it. The SUPER old stuff, years ago, that I still have? I never really look at it, but I don't delete it forever either. It's still hanging around in an old folder, on an old usb. If anything, it's a record of how I've grown as a writer. I don't want to lose that, even if those stories are never going to get finished.

 

[ThinkerX]

I make note of new ideas in my journal, along with what world or genre they go with. For more elaborate ideas, I'll create a short word file. I tend to reread the journal fairly often.

That said, I have lost a few story fragments in changing over computers.

 

[The Blue Lotus]

I save it all, and I have a MSword file titled "Ideas and other half backed Sh*t" Sometimes I go back to it and refine a small piece, other times I just reread it and see how far I've come, and I'm always adding to it. Sometimes a few times a day. See my post about how disorganized I usually am in the thread about how to get organized. Everyone has their own way of doing things, but for me I like to see what I've been up to.

 

[Asura Levi]

Well, I won't be destroying anything. I know I will regret a day or a week later. That is just too much concepts written there that I can't afford to lose.

As of organizing, I tried everything: a folder with all the doc, a word document with everything on it, a wiki (more than one actually), a Scrivener file titled "unlimited works", a journal, etc...

All this just resulted in me having loads of stuff spread around in the most different formats. Well, by spread around I mean all inside a Sandbox folder that is linked to dropbox.

I came to this thought just because once, long ago, I lost a considerable part of a WIP, when I had to redo it, it turn out better and bigger, since I spot a huge hole in the story on second writing (but hey, this is all about editing right!).

It was cool to learn your ideas guys. Thanks.

p.s.: about the wiki, I tried separated wikis for two distinct worlds, not a single wiki to put everything on it. Might try, if I have the patience to go through all those text documents.

 

[Bruce McKnight]

Every week (or so), I make a new copy of my WIP folder, name it by date, and copy it to backup drives. Then, if I ever end up changing, deleting, or abandoning anything, I can always go back to a point in time and see what was there.