I had a little free time last night and was going to write another post or two to schedule for my upcoming NanoPoblano attempt. Normally when I do my writing, even if I’m doing it on my phone, I do it on the main floor of my house. Last night, however, I was laying in bed. The reason that little tidbit is important is because the shelf area, below the drawer on my nightstand, is where I keep the notebooks that I used to do all my writing in. You know, before everyone started carrying around a computer in their pocket.

For awhile now, I’ve wanted to turn those writings into text files, but something always stopped me. Either I didn’t feel like typing it up, or I didn’t have the software on my computer to be able to do it, or I just didn’t have the time for it. Well, last night I had some time. So, I looked on my phone for a handwriting to text app. There were a number of them. I picked the first one on the list and played around with it for a few minutes. After scanning the first few pages, I went to move the text to a word document. I couldn’t. That was part of the app’s “premium service” and I’d have to pay for the upgrade. It honestly wasn’t a lot of money, but I didn’t want to pay for something if I could get it for free.

It took me a few tries until I finally found one that wouldn’t charge me money to move what I scanned. I have to put up with ads for this privilege, but it’s doable.

The story I picked to test was one I started, but didn’t get very far into (for reasons I don’t remember anymore). It was only 10-12 handwritten pages. Once I scanned them into the app, it became apparent that the conversion from handwriting to text wasn’t perfect. Then again, my handwriting is far from perfect, which may have been at least part of the problem. Needless to say, there is some editing that needs to be done to it before it’s even remotely presentable. I thought about doing the edits to it, breaking it up into parts, and posting it during my post-a-day November thing, but I’m not sure if that would be a good idea.

First of all, it’s one of the earliest things I wrote, which means it’s probably bad. After all these years, I know I’m still nowhere close to being the best writer in the world, but I am better now than I was back then. And, the edits I would do before posting would only be to fix any mistakes that happened during the handwriting to text conversion. I wouldn’t do any story editing to it, because I may go back over it sometime later and add to it.

That last sentence highlights the second problem I’m having with the idea of posting it: it’s not finished. It’s not even close. When I first started writing it, I was planning on making it a full blown novel. What I have written already is only around a chapter and a half of material. On the off chance that some of you out there would like it, and want me to continue, there’s not going to be any more coming any time soon. That would probably be frustrating to those who want more.

What do you think I should do, dear readers? Should I go ahead and post it, or should I hold onto it?