I’ve got entire folders full of unfinished stories.
Scenes that trail off. Characters who never made it past chapter three. Worlds built and then left behind. Ideas that sparked brightly and then just… faded.
I have a trilogy, the first ‘real’ writing I ever started – a full draft of book one, outlines for books two and three.
It’s not very good. (That’s an understatement.)
Still, I learned a LOT writing it. In that writing, I started to find my voice, I started to become a writer.
It’s not alone either—there’s a maudlin fictional retelling of a failed relationship, there’s a Cyberpunk universe build for a story about an autism ‘cure’ that gives the patient an implant, a little voice in their head that tells them how to behave. There’s the half novel I started during COVID lockdowns called IsoNation. There’s the tale of Ivarr the Unready, there’s The Prosthetic Man and there’s The Vagabond King.
There’s Jesus was a bloke named Craig, and there’s Stockholm.
I also have stacks of filled notebooks, ranging from $0.50 cheap newsprint to $50 full sized Moleskine hardcovers. These are filled with journal entries, with free writing and yes, with more story ideas.
I used to feel guilty about all of those. Wasteful. Like I’d failed somehow. Like I was a failure of a writer because I had so much that I’d never finished.
I don’t anymore.
Because here’s what I’ve learned: no draft is wasted. Not really.
Every single piece of writing that I never finished taught me something. About pacing. About tension. About what not to do. About the kind of stories I don’t want to tell. Or the kind I’m not ready to tell yet.
Sometimes, I find pieces of those drafts later. A sentence. A character’s name. A bit of dialogue. And it clicks into place in something new, something better. Compost for the next story. Mulch it into the brain, and see what sprouts.
I keep them all. While I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to work on them, I do know that I’m never going to throw them away.
The only wasted draft is the one you were too afraid to start. Or the one you let shame keep you from finishing—because you thought it wasn’t good enough.
Write the scene, even if it goes nowhere.
Tell the story, even if you know it’s a mess.
You don’t have to finish everything you write.
But everything you write helps you move forward.
So write.
Learn.
Grow.
And trust that none of it is wasted.