The Story of 12

My Not Quite Done Stories

What do you do if you get interrupted while you are writing? It’s tough enough if you’re on a roll — if the words are coming like a torrent of spring-melted snow, or if your thoughts are the best and brightest you’ve had in a couple of days. I suppose part of being a good writer is being able to plunge right back into it.

I know people have suggested to stop writing in the middle of a sentence if you’ve got to stop your work. They say it’s easier to pick it up again than if you work your way to the end of the paragraph or to the end of a chapter.

This is why I only answer the house phone for three people: my husband, our neighbor, and my friend Pam. Otherwise, everybody else can go pound dirt and leave a message. Of course, the phone rings at least eight times, but that’s my fault because that’s what the phone does. I don’t know how to change the number of rings.

Last time I buy a phone from AT&T. You’d think after all this time they would know how to make a good telephone. I don’t answer my cell phone at all. Haven’t quite learned the knack of it. I’ll swipe this way and swipe that way, and none of it works. I suppose I could practice, but picking up the landline is so much easier.

There is another reason I don’t answer the phone, and that’s because I had to talk so much on the phone when I was working. It would never fail, and there would be 64 people calling during the course of one day. Each and every single one of them wanted to ask me something or for me to do something.

I could never seem to get things done. I also didn’t know how to say NO. It took me years after I retired to be able to relax. I was always waiting for the next shoe to drop. So, just out of spite and because I can, I enjoy not answering the phone.

Don’t bother me. I’m writing.

But inevitably, there is always that partially finished piece of writing. Last night, I deleted the whole couple of pages I’d spent the afternoon on. It was dribble. It was disjointed. It was sloppy. I was whining and repeating myself. In short, it sucked. So, I didn’t save it.

I have a file complete with a table of contents with all the stories I’ve published on Medium. At the end of last month, the file began to be unstable. I colored the pages yellow, so I’d know right away if I opened it up by mistake and archived the file. It had 318,615 words in it. Almost enough for a couple of novels. I started writing 11/23/21 and went through 7/31/23. I still use it if I need to refer to a previously written article, but otherwise, it’s work done, and it’s all gone under the bridge.

The partially finished articles get popped into a document I call 12. The reason it is called 12 is that with my first unfinished article, my computer asked me if I wanted to save the document. My hand twitched as I did a yes/no move on the keyboard. Sometimes, if I’m tired, that happens.

It was December, as I recall, and I intended to put the date on the document in lieu of discarding it completely. It didn’t have a title at that point, so I figured the date would be fine. I got the 12 in there, but that’s when my hand twitched, and the document got named 12.

As time went by, I was glad that I had named the document 12. It’s easy to find if I want to save an unfinished story, and it’s better than having a bunch of unfinished stories swimming around on my computer. I’d never be able to find anything.

I don’t know how many stories are in 12. I just checked, and it’s got 63,888 words in it. I should do a spring cleaning in August and start fishing some of those partially finished stories out and fry them up. It’s sort of like having a job jar, except these are stories.

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I separate each piece with a pretty blue swirly scroll. It makes finding them easier.