In the drafts folder of this blog sit so many unfinished posts… Some are heavy and laden with meaning. Sleep, life, love, marriage, friendship, parenting, the years passing by, vegetable gardens. Even one about an email from a friend that suddenly found herself going through something I’d suffered through in the past.
There’s a post in there about taking K to Jimmy Mak’s to see a friend play. A post about Ignite Portland 5 that I never finished. One about a beautiful Spring day and one called “When Cats Cry”
I don’t have any idea what that’s about… I’m afraid to read it really.
There’s even a long lost post from the Consumer Whore Cami series. I really miss that series… maybe I should bring it back.
I’m torn between forcing myself to finish all those tidbits, all those pieces that I can’t seem to complete, just as they are, finding some bullshit conclusion for them or just hitting that magic delete button.
What would you do?
CamiKaos 
i’d go through each one, if in a quick glance anything inspires you to finish it – keep it, if not – toss it.
I go through and delete those sorts of drafts every so often. If I’m not excited enough to finish it after a couple weeks, out it goes.
I’d like to see “When Cats Cry”, because it makes me LOL! LOL, Cami!
Otherwise, I’d hit delete. There’s a reason you never posted/ finished them.
Post them half-done, then let commenters finish the stories :)
I would give yourself permission to delete them and set them free. Or hang on to ’em for a bit until you know for sure.
I, for one, have never been able to “return” to a drafted post …
I have a similar folder (currently heavy with superstitious things I do to keep family members safe, questioning the value of self-knowledge, and the limits of do-it-yourself education) and that folder is starting to smell like my refrigerator a week or two after we decide that we’re going to cook lots of vegetables at home and we shop like that and then are too tired/busy to actually follow through. (ooh, I could blog about the gap between my intentions and actions! or maybe I’ll get to that later…) So what I think you should do is donate them. Have a website that is just prompts for the uninspired blogger. An exchange, one half-baked idea for another. Because, I think just the title “When Cats Cry” makes ME want to write and that hasn’t happened in weeks.
Only finish the ones that you can put an ending on. I hate it when I read a great story, like Stephen King, and he tacks a shit ending on it just to get it out the door.
Sometimes unfinished things inspire other things to get done, even though they themselves are never completed.
-Stu
I too have wondered what to do with the detritus of thoughts past. Some of them are the results of efforts to puzzle through a problem, others are just thoughts interrupted and some are just bees that wandered into my bonnet and flew back out again before I was done swatting at them.
I can’t categorize them by title alone and sometimes I can’t even categorize them after having read what I have written. My intent (because I have never actually gotten around to doing anything) is to keep everything that is not a single-incident rant for a while (notice the vague timeframe?)and then clear everything out and start anew.
Maybe next year I will include deleting unfinished posts as part of my Passover cleaning. Or not.
Although I like Aaron’s idea of letting commenters finish them (you know, like those neverending stories where you’d write a few sentences then pass it to the next person), I’d opt for deleting them. They are thoughts, feelings, emotions, and events of the past and are probably not relevant anymore. Trying to force them to be relevant will end up with awkwardness. Ideas that truly are important have a way of reoccurring. They’ll resurface in new posts on their own without having to revive and patch up half-dead ones.
With all that being said, I’m still intrigued by that “When Cats Cry” title.
thanks for all your great responses! Today I will brave my fears and read “When Cats Cry”
maybe it will be something I can finish and post. It’s sure to be anticlimactic.