Confessions from the Drawer of Almost: My Five Abandoned Projects, Ranked by Guilt
Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
There's a folder on my laptop called "Misc Drafts" and a physical drawer in my desk that serve the same function: they are where ideas go to be forgiven. Not finished — forgiven. There's a difference, and it took me about a decade to understand it.
Last month, in a fit of Sunday-night avoidance, I opened both. What follows is an inventory of the ghosts. I'm telling you about them because I've decided that shame is a terrible storage system, and because — spoiler — these dead projects turned out to be the most honest teachers I've had.
The Screenplay That Only Ever Had a Title
"The Long Weekend." That's it. That's the project. A title, a logline about three siblings cleaning out their childhood home in Ohio, and a first page I rewrote maybe fourteen times.
Why it stalled: I wanted the opening to be perfect before I earned the right to write scene two. Somewhere in my brain, a first page had become a gatekeeper instead of a doorway. I was polishing a doorknob on a house with no walls.
What it taught me: momentum beats polish. The drafts I've actually finished were ugly on page one and got better because I kept walking. "The Long Weekend" still haunts me a little, but mostly it reminds me that perfectionism is just procrastination wearing a nicer outfit.
The Pilot That Died in Act Two
This one hurts more. I wrote about forty pages of a half-hour comedy pilot — a workplace ensemble set in a struggling independent bookstore, because I have never met a cliché I didn't personally embody. I loved these characters. I still do.
Why it stalled: I wrote myself into a corner in the back-half of act two and, instead of writing a bad scene to get out, I stopped. I told myself I was "letting it breathe." It has been breathing for three years. It's on a ventilator.
What it taught me: corners are where the real writing happens. Every structural problem I've solved since, I solved because I refused to stop. The pilot didn't fail — I just declined the invitation to fix it.
The Essay Pitch That Got Away
In 2021, I had an idea for a personal essay about grief and sitcom laugh tracks. I drafted the pitch email. I never pressed send. I told myself the timing wasn't right, that the market was oversaturated, that someone smarter had already written it.
Why it stalled: fear dressed up as strategy. "Not yet" is the most sophisticated lie a hesitant writer tells.
What it taught me: send the email. Even a rejection is a door closing audibly, which is more information than silence ever gives you. I rewrote that essay eventually, for this site, and it did fine. The universe did not require my permission to let me write it.
The Novel Notes That Were Just Vibes
A notes app full of fragments: a sentence about a highway at dusk, a character name ("Dee"), the phrase "the summer everything got quiet." No plot. No outline. Just vibes in a trench coat.
Why it stalled: I confused inspiration for a project. Vibes are ingredients, not a meal.
What it taught me: some ideas aren't books — they're compost. Dee showed up in a short story last year, better for the wait. Not every seed is a tree; some are just fertilizer, and fertilizer is undervalued.
The Podcast That Never Recorded a Single Episode
My friend and I planned a whole show about film adaptations — theme music, episode breakdowns, a name we loved. We bought a microphone. The microphone is still in the box. The box has moved apartments with me twice.
Why it stalled: we planned the fun parts and skipped the doing parts. Planning feels like progress; it just isn't.
What it taught me: the gap between wanting to make something and making it is almost always one unglamorous step. Record the bad first episode. Ship the ugly draft. The microphone, like everything else in the drawer, was never the obstacle.
What the Ghosts Are For
Here's what I've landed on: abandoned projects aren't failures, they're tuition. Each one taught me something specific — about momentum, corners, sending the email, composting, and starting — that I couldn't have learned any other way.
I'm not promising to resurrect "The Long Weekend." But I've stopped apologizing for the drawer. It's not a graveyard. It's a workshop where the materials are all my own mistakes, and honestly? The inventory's pretty good.
