…when I can’t write…. when I’m stuck on a project I go through all of my old writing. At least, I go through all of my old writing that I have on computer. I’ve been writing for 21 years basically, but I’ve only been writing on a computer since the early 90′s.

Okay– so I’ve got this HUGE folder of old writing, roughly 12 years worth of ideas and unfinished manuscripts that I play with when I can’t write on what I’m supposed to be writing on. Why do I do this? Hell if I know. I mean, really, I have no clue why I do this. It’s not inspiring, it’s not even really all that entertaining. I’m not in love with my own words…. yet I’m compelled on a very regular basis to go through all of my old writing.

Do you have that “story teller” relative? That one person who tells you the same stories over and over again? Even when you remind them that you’ve already heard the story– they tell you anyways. So, you sit and listen to it and smile. Well, I do this to myself with my writing. What the hell is wrong with me?

Anyways- it’s a thing I do. Sometimes I fiddle with the stories, edit them a little, add a scene here or there even though the vast majority of the projects will never ever sell. I mean, some of these I wrote when I was 19 years old. You might be wondering how many there are in this mysterious folder on my computer called “Old Writing Crap”. For the record there are 280 word documents in that file and there are 5416 word documents in “Writing Archive”… but some of that is research and stuff. Really. It’s research.

Okay, so those numbers are silly. I ask again, what the hell is wrong with me that I have so many files and why out of 5416 documents are only 280 of them deemed to be “old writing crap”? There is no explaining the level of my OCD except to say that those 5416 documents are seperated into 547 seperate file folders.