Hello.

Recently, I went through my index of story ideas. I judged 29 of them to be complete stories; the remaining 60+ are anything from ‘barely has a beginning’ to ‘only needs an ending.’

What surprised me was the realization (after someone pointed it out) that several of my ideas were not incomplete, only better suited to short stories. I had not really considered writing short stories before. Perhaps it should have occurred to me sooner; I find it hard to say how long a story will be until I write all of it down in some form or other. 10 of my 29 complete tales may not need to become full-length novels.

Another assumption which got corrected was the dominance of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I have no numbers for you here. I find it difficult to determine a work’s genre so, for my list, I mostly guessed. The ones with multiple genres would not sort correctly. Then I found I had somehow missed several which clearly needed the Fantasy tag. In the end, I have roughly the same number of stories without magic or advanced technology as ones with them. I was pleasantly surprised to find so many.

I also started sorting my messy files into a system. That will be a work in progress for a long time to come. In the new file folder system, I made a folder labeled “Published.” So far it is empty. I look inside now and then; it is exciting – and motivating – to picture it full.

Imagine! Nineteen potential novels to write, and several more in the works. It does not sound like overly much, until you consider how much goes in to taking one from an idea and making it into something worth reading. If you estimate one story per year, that becomes a long time! And then one needs to publish it. How best to publish is a question for another day.