When I was sixteen and fascinated by defining my world by arranging the files on my computer, I made a small purgatory directory just beneath my writer’s work desk (C:\>Mine\Files\Creating\Writing\Workdesk\Purgatory). I thought I’d throw in everything I started to write but never finished; everything that needed revision and never got revised. I imagined that in ten year’s time, no matter how many full works of fiction I had produced, in the very least I’ll have a directory chuck-full of wonderful things: ideas brilliant but never really explored, terrains too bizarre to venture in, bad fiction, poetry that stinks, all these gems, overlooked in their time but ready to be discovered. A purgatory.

It’s kind of disheartening to see how empty it really is.