Taking Stock

I am stuck. I have too little time to write and too many ideas.

Today I sat down and did something I've been wanting to do since New Year's. I went through my notebooks and my computer files and took stock of what I have in process. I felt like a greengrocer at the turn of last century climbing up a ladder to peer to the back of the shelves where the old potatoes are kept.

Here's what's in my inventory:

-2 completed memoirs
-1 half-written memoir
-6 partially written novels - some with only fragments or a chapter and two with over 100 pages
-10+ essays or sketches
-11 stories comprising a short story collection -- 4 are completed

So, now what? If I activate my lawyer brain I scan through everything to try to find the thing I can most easily finish, so I can move one more thing into the "finished" column. But I know that's not what I should do.

My preoccupation with work and my failure to have a writing routine yet means I can't hear my own voice telling me what to do. I need a long stretch of quiet with some good, clean energy (and really good tea). I need a week off. I need to find the wispiest character in the bunch and figure out what she is trying to say.