Sometimes, I do not do well with prioritizing my writing. There are many days when I let my day job get in the way of my creative job. This past week is a perfect example. I had been working on three different short stories to be submitted to various anthologies. However, I am also in the midst of the biggest project of my career. As a project manager working on a global project, I have been up at all hours of the morning participating in 5am calls. The night before some of these calls I worked on outlines until 3:30am.
The day job got the better of me and I was unable to finish my stories in time to submit them. Now I have three outlines and two almost complete stories staring back at me.
Truthfully, I have more than three outlines. This is not the first time where I started on submissions, put in several hours of time and energy and was unable to get it completed in time. I was thinking about this when I opened Scrivener and I saw the short stories crafted but never submitted. It breaks my heart to know that there are these stories with no where to submit them.
Once I met Orson Scott Card and when he discovered that (at the time) I was not submitting my short stories for publication, he told me that I was poisoning myself.
"That is not why your write them. You write them to share them with the world not to keep them in your house."
He was right and I think that I am starting to feel that poison in my bones. Whenever I think of all these hidden tales, I cannot help but feel sick. I did not spend hours to have this work sit here.
Which leads me to the point of this post. What should I do with these incomplete, near complete, just begun work?
There is one story that I started last week that I can rework to fit another call for submission, but what about the others?
One part of me thinks I should release my own anthology. Maybe something self published. Another side of me thinks, maybe I should complete the stories and keep them organized and waiting for an appropriate call for submission.
In any case, I am searching for feedback from both the writing community, readers and just anyone who reads this post.
What should I do with these unpublished tales?
PhoebeJaneWrites 
I self-publish the majority of my work. It lets me have 100% creative control, which I like. I publish my short stories individually, spreading them out over the weeks, and my eventual plan (once I have enough of my work out there) is to gather them all into an anthology with one to three, never-before-seen stories. It will give each story multiple sale points. I hope this helps.
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