How to Mourn that Story you never Finished

Some stories don’t make it. I’m sure you’re already WELL aware of that if you’re a writer.
Not because they weren’t good, or because you didn’t care enough, but because something shifted. You outgrew it. Life got busy. The plot unraveled. Or maybe the fire that lit it up when you first started just… dimmed. It doesn’t interest you anymore.

And now it sits in your drafts folder, collecting dust or …uh… pixels.

If that’s where you’re at: I see you.

So here’s a little post I’ve been wanting to write for awhile on mourning the death of your story and what you can learn from the whole thing. Very similar to my post on knowing when to quit on a story, this post will focus on the after and the questions you can critically ask so you can grow and learn. Otherwise, the experience can be discouraging and it feels like you just dumped your time into a project that never showed tangible results. So let’s try and avoid that. 🙂

Read It With Curiosity, Not Criticism

When you’re ready, go back and reread the draft. Not to fix it, but to understand it.

Ask yourself some qestions such as:

• What parts still make you feel something?
• What parts confused you or dragged?
• Where were you trying too hard to be someone you’re not as a writer?

Remember: you wrote that version of the story with the skills and heart you had then. That’s a snapshot of a creative moment in time. It deserves to live on. Please, please, please don’t delete no matter how cringe and blackmail worthy this piece might be.

Look for the Seeds You Can Replant Elsewhere

Even if the story didn’t grow into what you imagined, that doesn’t mean it was wasted. Often, buried in “dead” drafts are pieces worth saving:

• A compelling side character
• A setting that still sparkles in your mind
• A line of dialogue that makes you sit up and whisper, “That’s it.”

You might not resurrect the whole story but you can borrow from its bones. Let it compost into something new.

Track Your Creative Patterns

Unfinished stories are often full of clues about yourself. It holds your interests, your hang-ups, and what you feel is important.

Try this:

• Make a list of your abandoned stories.
• Jot down what each one was trying to explore (themes, feelings, questions).
• See what repeats.

You might realize you always write about lonely girls and overgrown gardens. Or that your stories die when the middle turns into a slog. That kind of self-awareness? Invaluable. Plus you can use it to inform your creative decisions moving forward. Try and place what you wanted from this draft.

Final Thought:

It’s okay if the ending never got written. And who knows? One day you might go back. Maybe not to fix it, but to pick up where you left off. Or not. Either way, the story gave you something.