restlessIn those eleven years I have never binned a WIP story no matter how little it seems to be working or how little it grabs me. I have always kept it in a WIP folder just in case at some point I do feel inspired to continue it, or indeed I can use part of it. I have WIPs going back all those eleven years, all neatly sorted by fandom/pairing/character and I have been inspired to return to quite a few of them. And I have two layers of WIP folders, one 'active' and one 'archive' the latter are ones I think I'll never return to, but still keep - just in case'.
However, yesterday I did ditch a story I was writing. I was about 300 words in, knew where I was going with it, what I wanted to achieve but it just wasn't working and I just knew I couldn't 'fix' it. So I ditched it rather than keep it. It was a very hard thing to do, as it felt unnatural to do so and I still can't quite believe I did it. But I did - and I not only ditched it, I emptied my trash can, so it really has gone as far as being able to easily retrieve it goes.
It made me wonder what other people do. Do you keep everything even if you know/feel/believe it's rubbish, just in case? Or do you only keep WIPs for a certain length of time? If so how long? Do you have periodic clear outs of your WIP folders? Or something completely different?
