*DELETED*

After much back-and-forth, over-thinking, re-thinking, and second-guessing, eventually leading nowhere, I’ve decided to DELETE two book projects I’ve been working on for years. These books have plagued me with feelings of failure, so I’m concluding it’s time to officially scratch them, move forward, and embrace that I never organized the ideas into coherency worthy of book formatting.

Before the decision to delete was made, I’d considered posting a chapter a week, to help purge my system, maybe even creating some validation in an audience who likes my style of writing. This literal release would force my brain into a new space about the project, while lending me the illusion I hadn’t wasted my time.

Then, I re-read my post Efficiently Efficient Non-Efficiency. I think I might still be putting off the hard decision.

Because of my convoluted writing technique, (technique used sarcastically here) my editing process has become a tedious chore of non-doing. I’m adding so much content, effectively changing the book in major ways, it’s more like piecemealing two stories together. My refusal to let it go, to start fresh, has created a mess that DELETING truly makes clean. Why not give it a fair shot by re-booting, or, if these characters allow themselves a rest period, move forward? New lives are clamoring from their cage in my head, ignored as I focus on these original characters.

Just finishing isn’t good enough.

The time taken, and energy expended, into these projects hasn’t been a waste of time, even if they end up lost in the purgatory of silicon nano-bytes. Writing this post has helped me realize that, along with helping me further postpone this DELETE. 😉  I brought my laptop out with every intention of deleting the remaining files of these projects, but instead came here to post about it.

Should I start a pool for whether or not DELETED actually happens?

• Have you ever had a project that plagued you for years, but you couldn’t seem to finish, or let go?
• Am I being a little crazy?