Doing inventory

I have:

The first two volumes of a big space opera trilogy in different draft stages. So far, I’ve knocked the first volume down from well over 230,000 words to approx. 179,000. The second volume weighs in at over 206,000 ish words. Both books are still too long. The project is humongous. I wrote a few thousand words of the third volume before putting it on hold indefinitely, which makes me sad because I’ve left my characters stuck on mountain ranges, caught in the middle of space battles, and trapped within planet spanning sea walls.

90,490 words worth of YA fantasy. Some of it got straightened out in the YOSF&F workshop last year. Reducing it and editing it will be my main AJWWB project. It still doesn’t have a kick-ass title.

5000 words of another YA fantasy, but one that will require a lot of research. One day...

7000 words of a book that started out as a paranormal romance, but keeps wanting to become something else. I love the heroine and want to give her room to stretch. Well edited, but under wraps for now until I decide which genre would be the best fit for it.

2362 words of a horror novella, or maybe a book, all that remains of a project that was mostly deleted. I still like the central premise, but its voice won’t gel.

6 stories out in the world, their status as yet undetermined.

8 completed short stories that need a good, hard edit before they too go forth. They’re slumbering in little computer cocoons, waiting to become butterflies.

5 big stories with that need endings. Or middles. I’m almost sure they’ll be finished one day, especially the one about the warrior Ice Queen and her dragon which just needs an historical event involving an exiled king (I know his name) clarified two thirds of the way through. But just what exactly is that event? Hmmm, I might get back to that one over the next 2 weeks.

6 big stories that keep getting rejected, but nicely. They keep almost making it. What magical tweak do they need to make them irresistible to editors?

Countless bits and pieces that didn’t amount to much. Most of them will probably remain fragments forever.

I filing cabinet full of typewritten stories on paper from my pre-computer, olden days of writing. I dimly recall a few titles and outlines. I really should fish out a few and give them a looking over. Who knows what perfectly usable sentences might be lurking in there.

Lots and lots of ideas clamouring for attention. All I need is a few years of dedicated writing time to make them happen.