I'm curious. What do you consider a Work In Progress? This WIP meme going around at the moment has me wondering if I'm some kind of attention-deficient ficloon. Because, well…

Okay, I always title my fic documents with a number – I find it works for me. Different versions of the same fic have the same number, but with an a, b, c, etc, added. My counting system doesn't always work – sometimes stories split, or become amalgamated, but for the most part, it's an accurate guide. I started off with SG1-001.doc, way back in 2006 sometime, and I'm now up to SG1-207.doc. Of those, I've posted about 70-something (wtf? When?). That leaves 130-odd unfinished Stargate fics.

Some of them are pretty damn long, some are nearly finished but missing some element that I haven't put my finger on yet, some are just a few paragraphs of inspiration, some are rubbish but I like aspects of it and with some editing and rewriting they'll work… there's lots of variation. There's only a few that I definitely consider 'dead' fics. Pretty much all of them I'll go back to, occasionally, and chip away at. Sometimes I do finish ones that I thought I'd never get done, unexpectedly, years later (I did that more than once in a previous fandom, and they tended to be some of my favourite stories that I've written, and often some of the longest).

But surely I don't have 130 WIPs? I have hordes of fics from previous fandoms that never did get finished, and probably never will (well, unless the Wolverine film inspires me – which it might…). The same rule probably applies here, especially as the series has come to an end. My Stargate writing has certainly slowed down (much though I don't want to stop). About a year ago I did a WIP meme (posts here and here), and posted several snippets – two of them have since been posted (amalgamated into one story), the rest are still unfinished. And yet… I have worked on several of them, since then. And, prompted by this meme, I've picked up and worked on three of them again this week.

So, do you consider your WIPs to be things you're actually working on or thinking about? How recently? Do you have a shedload of unfinished fics, too, or am I spectacularly lacking in focus? What's your dividing point between work-in-progress and work-not-going-anywhere?