Thursday Thirteen

I have had, for some time now, a major procrastination problem. I have a lot of unfinished projects, ideas, ... stuff ... that I look at, move around from place to place on my desk, or otherwise ignore.

I thought I'd list 13 of them. That there are more than 13 is rather scary, but there you go. These are things that pertain to my writing career, so I am not including stuff like clean out the attic or paint the bathroom. That also needs to be taken care of but it would be a terribly long list if I added household items. Maybe I will list household items another time.

These are not in any order of importance, just as they come to me. In all of these projects, my options are to keep procrastinating, do it, or decide it isn't viable, and finally let go of the darned thing.


1. Revise my thesis and turn it into something for publication.

2. Finish my research and the book on the history of Cloverdale.

3. Do my genealogy. Some of this is done. This is rather a time consuming project, and one I was saving for when I was old. Am I old now?

4. Listen to and transcribe some cassette tapes I have of dead relatives and turn that into books for family members. I have had this on my desk since 2006. Apparently I am just not ready yet to revisit those voices. Maybe I should give this to another relative.

5. Gather up the poetry I have written over the years and turn it into a chapbook.

6. Revise the first novel I ever wrote to completion (which is sitting on the shelf by my desk). It's a Gothic romance, which is pretty much a dead genre.

7. Finish the fantasy book I started that reached 100 pages before I abandoned it. It has magic in it, is a quest book, and has a number of characters, like Lord of the Rings.

8. Finish the second part of that fantasy series, which I also started and abandoned. This one is more focused on a single character, and is actually the story of a secondary character in the first book.

9. Write that other book that would also be a fantasy of sorts but is also historical, the one that keeps floating around in my mind from time to time. This one would cover hundreds of years and start out in Dr. Johnson's time in London, which is to say, the 1700s, and progress forward. There is moonshine involved.

10. Write that other story that is apocalyptic, which might be a short story or a novel, not sure. The one about garbage.

11. Write that other novel that is apocalyptic (yes, I like those kinds of stories), the one that starts out in the Greenbrier bunker. This one also has magic.

12. Write a 20th century history of Botetourt County. It needs to be done before the information is lost (meaning before the stuff I have gathered gets thrown out when I have turned to dust).

13. Read all of these books I have laying around. I have never had such a backlog of reading as I have now. Maybe next week I will list 13 books I have on my shelves to read. Or not.



Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 244rd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.