Incomplete

I am home from vacation. Spent and refreshed at once. I went to sleep at 9:30 last night and work up after 8 this morning.

I have several incomplete pieces of writing and ideas that sprang from being away. I will gather them up and possibly post a few of them tonight or tomorrow.

I can't ever decide how I feel about unfinished writing - well, my unfinished writing, anyway. I write down ideas all the time. Ideas are one thing, but a part-done piece of writing is a different ball of wax entirely.

If I have an idea, I generally write down the bare bones of the idea in a tiny outline. Sometimes I get back to the idea, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I write something based completely on that little outline and sometimes I rob the main idea and put it in something else. This is all quite satisfying to me.

What I hate is having little frayed bits of stories or essays or whatever dangling around. I don't know why they fade out. I'll get something in my head and I'll go for a while and then it stops. Nothing more comes. Not even a general sense of where it might go. When I go back to these fragments, I've often lost the train of thought.

I then begin to wonder if it's worth trying to pick up again. Yet I almost can't get rid of a piece of writing - no matter how embarrassingly awful or misguided. But I hate them - those incomplete thoughts.

Not every piece of writing will lead somewhere good or effective or well-plotted. I know this. I know that sometimes just making an attempt makes other things happen - new ideas bud and flower. It doesn't make me feel better about the pieces though.

I'd like to know what is so compelling that I must write it down, but that I can't seem to figure a finish to. Maybe I'm really questioning my life. Oh hell. That's too deep for my vacation-worn mind to grapple with now. Forget I said anything.