Bloody hell (a post about writing)

So .... the folder containing Rites of Exorcism stuff contains the current finished first drat (70K, nanowrimo of this year). I'm 20K into the sequel. The rest of the folders within it contain another 151,768 words. Various novel drafts, setting notes, character notes, write-ups on creatures, other attempts at the setting and so forth.

This is damn depressing on a number of levels :p

The worst part is that I have one other novel that, in various iterations totals 201,227 words. The actual novel that resulted from all that -- Monsters & Miracles -- was 67,000 of those words and is entirely impossible  to compare to the first draft of the story, which is kind of cool in its own way. Almost nothing from the first drafts survived at all, which is at least proof of a kind of progress even if it, too, can be seen as depressing.

I also have a trilogy in progress whose accumulated word count is 137,000 words which seems reasonable enough as it includes one finished draft of the first novel, 4K of the second novel, partial revised draft of the first and notes for the entire series.

(For the curious few, Boy & Fox is over 80K, not including 50+ handwritten pages I've yet to type up. Which isn't surprising given there are entire chapters of the first draft that no one else ever saw. It was very strange to be submitting a story to a writing group and editing entire chapters of the future story out of it in the process, which is one clue why it stalled so very badly.)

OTOH, the accumulated word count of some of the projects in some way forces a finished draft, as it did with M&M and has in many ways with the Rites series. I tend to be the sort of writer who leaps from idea to idea and concept to concept, seldom bothering to ever really go back and edit/revise novels since the new is always luring me on. However, thanks(?) to the writing group I tend to stop novels mid-stride, revise it as a new draft and what emerges at the end of an absurdly large word count is at least a more functional finished first draft.

Or so I am telling myself right now :)