Taking my most recent post, Why Wait? to heart, I decided to take an inventory of my own major pending projects, just to see where I stand on them. Here’s what I came up with:

Project & % Completed

• Britomar — Book 1 – MS/YA novel                   70%
• Leaving Egypt – Sojourner Truth play             70%
• Mr. Wilde Goes West – screenplay                   40%
• Little Soldier of Fortune – musical                   20%
• Hiding at Home — memoir                                 20%
• What the River Keeps – novel                            30%

Looking at this list, I’m struck by two things: first, how wildly different all these projects are, and second, how far I have to go to bring them to completion. Right now, many of them are sitting forlornly in files with lots of sketchy notes and rough drafts, but I haven’t really pushed through to a full first draft on any of them. This is really what My Year of Writing Dangerously is all about for me. Currently, I’m focusing all my attention on writing my Britomar story from beginning to end and that’s moving ahead fairly briskly. My goal is to have a completed first draft by the fall. If I push hard over the next six-to-eight weeks, that’s doable.

Clearly, though, I have lots of unfinished business. I tend to work on several projects at once, adding to each of them in spurts. This keeps me engaged and allows me to make progress, but it isn’t really very efficient. I need to come up with a better system. Any suggestions? What unfinished projects are languishing in your files? Which one do you have the best chance of completing in the near future if you focus your energy on it?