Curious Realizer - what's in your creative limbo?

Confessions of creative projects which never saw the light of day

Photo by Geri Forsaith on Unsplash

One of my shame points¹ is the number of creative projects that I’ve abandoned. I may look like a prolific writer based on the number of newsletters I normally publish each week, but I’ve abandoned a large number of writing projects over the past 40+ years. I’m getting better at taking ideas and working them through to completion but the other unfinished work is still there taking up space in my mind.

I hope that if I come clean and admit to some of my unfinished writing projects, one of two things will happen:

• I’ll realize that the original idea wasn’t so great and I can finally put it to death rest.

• I’ll conclude that the idea might be worth salvaging and then I can make a reasonable decision about whether or not to continue work on it (and maybe some of these ideas will get done).

Here are some of the more notable contents of my creative limbo. I’ll use some categories to put things in meaningful groups.

Blogs (R.I.P.)

I have created and abandoned at least five blogs in the past 15 years. You can still find two of them online: The Mighty Introvert and Keep Taking Another Step. The focus of the first is pretty obvious, the second was mainly about my experiences with long distance running: I actually finished a full marathon six years ago and ran several half-marathons leading up to that.

I used to write a self-titled WordPress blog. I am not taking questions about it at this time.

My two best blogs (up to the time that I stopped writing them) were Broadcasting Brain and Thoughtwrestling. How About This covers some of the topics that I wrote about between 2008 - 2011 in those two defunct blogs. Broadcasting Brain was very “gosh wow, Web. 2.0 and social media are so cool” stuff, a weak attempt at thought leadership on some topics. This was before I realized how much of this new wave was being driven by marketers and PR people. Thoughtwrestling was more about creativity, productivity and doing things online. The blog was something that I envisioned as a side hustle with the idea to expand into other projects but while it was an interesting trial I wasn’t ready to commit to it in the way that it needed (and it had plenty of flaws). I miss both blogs but I’m also embarrassed by them so in Limbo they will stay, though I may repurpose some of the better stuff over time.

One project I did during Thoughtwrestling was to create and sell a digital product teaching mind mapping. Creating and marketing the product was a tremendous educational experience - the product has been out of circulation for over a decade because, honestly, it has a few major flaws, not the least of which is its title.

Various creative writing projects

Here’s a short description of fiction projects that I’ve abandoned over the years:

Lightspeed

Lightspeed was to be a novel focusing on several characters and how their lives changed when the world learned that scientists broke the light barrier (i.e. discovered a way to move a spaceship at the speed of light). Some of the characters would be directly involved with the Lightspeed project, others would instead be inspired by the accomplishment. I created some background materials and wrote a sample chapter or two but it never got momentum. I think it will remain in Limbo permanently.

The Miracle

Put simply, this project would have been a take on the Web 1.0/dot com era and how companies were throwing big bucks at dumb technology ideas in the late 90s/early 2000s. The story would revolve around one of these companies that did launch a product and had more money to spend than it could reasonably use, so of course that wouldn’t work out well. I’ve never watched the TV show Silicon Valley but I suspect it could be similar. I could see this one becoming a graphic novel and I still love the idea, but I think it will continue to live in Limbo.

Days of the Week

Days of the Week was a concept that seemed more cool to me than it actually was. If you’re familiar with the TV series Severance you’d find some similarities between it and my idea, with 2 exceptions: 1. fewer characters to follow and 2. the use of a time loop/time travel. This will probably stay in Limbo, you should watch Severance instead!

Something about alternate universes

I have a couple of ideas for stories about alternate universes. I just recently realized that one of them closely resembles part of the main story from the late TV series Fringe. Oops. Limbo it is.

The Legion of Super-Heroes… set at Hogwarts

The Legion of Super-Heroes is an esoteric, acquired taste but the idea of the Legion (a team of teen heroes²) actually has some similarities to the concept of a school for young wizards like Hogwarts, except that almost everything about the Legion is science-based and occurs 1000 years in the future. Basically, it would revolve around structuring this futuristic super-team into an academy with several houses or divisions… sigh, Limbo it is.

Photo by Paul Volkmer on Unsplash

Lost Near Barnard’s Star

Three siblings make the first interstellar voyage to another star system - searching for intelligent life - and things go wrong. Very much inspired by the Fantastic Four. In the spirit of Neil Gaiman’s remarks about finishing stories, I will finish this one eventually because it’s at least half done and it’s reasonably short.

King of Clubs

I envisioned this as being a TV series, a kind of cross between Community and The Prisoner, with a dash of Lost. The setting is an apartment building complex with an unusual history, almost like an Epcot Centre without the Disney. The protagonist is a novelist trying to complete his next work with the help of a mysterious grant which includes free housing at this apartment complex. The writer’s odd neighbours and their hobbies would be a constant cause of friction. I’m very fond of this concept and did a bunch of background writing for it. This might emerge from Limbo someday.

Photo by Yogi Purnama on Unsplash

Superman: Infallible

This story would tell the tale of the first time Superman failed to save someone’s life. Ideally it would be a comic book. I’d like to rescue this one from Limbo someday as long as it stays relatively short.

Lost Moon

This project would be a retelling of the TV series Space: 1999. Pure fan fiction, this. I have thought of ways to both modernize the original concept and add depth to it. The premise behind the TV series is that Earth’s Moon leaves orbit after a series of nuclear explosions accelerate it to great speed. The Moon departs from our solar system and wanders through space while the people living on the Moon fight to survive and find a new home. I found a couple of different ways to rework the concept that really intrigued me. Every now and then I open this one up and pick at it. There’s limited value to a writer in playing around with an established franchise, especially one controlled as this one is, but it’s fun to play in occasionally. I think this will stay in Limbo but I might continue to pick away at it if the mood strikes.

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Everything I’ve described in this section is a fiction project of some kind. I’ve had a number of non-fiction projects that I’ve been thinking about but for now I’m keeping those under wraps.

And now I will talk about my Moby Dick, the huge writing project that taunts me and occasionally beckons me closer but I almost always recoil in fear when it approaches. But maybe, just maybe, if I shine a spotlight on it, it won’t seem so scary.

My great white whale - Prisoner in Amber

In 2018 I started (and completed) NaNoWriMo. Well, I completed it in one sense: I hit the word count, generating about 50,000 words. I think it’s about one-third of a novel, which in turn could be a two or three book series. But oh my god, it needs a lot of work.

The novel - which I call Prisoner in Amber - starts several hundred years in our future with a man waking up in a hospital room, surrounded by the voices of people he doesn’t know. In fact, he can’t remember anything and he’s too injured to see or speak. He learns that he’s on Mars, he was in a terrible accident in space and his body is gradually being healed and repaired. He’s forgotten who he is and so after months of therapy his memories are rebuilt. He’s a member of a powerful family that is building a travel system to help humanity reach Alpha Centauri.

Over time he starts noticing a series of little things about his past that don’t add up. He starts to doubt that he’s being told the truth about everything and that’s kind of the central story mixed in with space exploration, etc.

Dear H.A.T.T.E.R.³, I want to work on this novel but every time I look at the binder which contains the printed copy I am overwhelmed by the amount of time and effort it will take to finish a first draft. I've got plenty of words to play with and lots of background information and ideas. Honestly, there too many ideas to consider because I could see this novel going in many different directions.

The novel hangs over my head, both tempting and taunting me. Or at least that’s how it feels. I’m not writing this for sympathy or encouragement, just to be honest with both myself and those of you reading this newsletter. Like many things, if I can force myself to focus and devote time to it I could probably turn this into a decent first draft but I feel paralyzed by the thought of the work involved. Incidentally, I think NaNoWriMo should warn participants about this feeling if they hit their word count goals!

I’m tempted to do a NaDraRevMo (National Draft Revision Month) this year but no promises. I fear there is a good chance that this project will be stuck in Limbo but I can’t bear to dump it either.

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This post was kind of embarrassing to write but I’m testing a theory that by talking about the big items in my creative limbo I might encourage myself to face some of them. Prisoner in Amber feels like the one that I should pursue but maybe I need to work up to it with some smaller projects first.

Over to you! Do you have any unfinished projects lurking in a dark filing cabinet or a hidden folder on your computer? Do you feel like airing them out? Leave a comment! This is a safe place so say what you would like to say!

1. A shame point is a specific thing about yourself that makes you wince inwardly and outwardly if anyone ever finds out. I made up the term shame point (the term shame is probably specific enough) because it makes it feel like a specific destination in your mind that you never want to visit.

2. Few fictional concepts are as complicated as the Legion of Super-Heroes, which not only deals with tons of characters and settings but the concept has been rebooted 5 or 6 times and there’s no good entry point for 21st century readers any more. Needless to say I continue to love it.

3. H.A.T.T.E.R. = How About This Terribly Enthusiastic Reader or How About This Thoughtfully Engaged Reader or How About This Temporarily Engaged Reader or How About This Temporarily Eying Rando.