This week's Living Out Loud was to be called "Revisiting the Night Creeper" -- a tale of five fires in the Roanoke apartment building in Clifton in February 1976 and the arsonist who was setting them. I was going to refer to an article Jon Christopher Hughes wrote 29 years ago, insert some interviews with tenants who lived there at the time and also provide some new information on the fires.

As I got into the writing process, I just couldn't get it to work as a column. It was much too long and the more I thought about it, the more I felt it should run as a feature story, maybe on the 30th anniversary of the fires. I stopped writing it. I killed the column.

What's significant to me about this is that the creeper story is the first column I've started for L-O-L and not completed. For sure, some columns have been written and not used, but I like to finish what I start. I don't want my failings as a writer to include starting a story and then forgetting about it. No, sir, I'll fail with completion.

And fail I have. Are you interested in some titles that were never quite brought off? I hope so, because I need a column this week.

Last year I wrote "Saying Hello, Saying Goodbye" -- about a co-worker I resented years ago, because he coasted in his job. When I found out he was dying of cancer, I felt extreme guilt over all the bad feelings I had of him. I struggled, I tried to express the emotions I had over this, but the piece came across rambling and defensive. I didn't run it.

Then there was "Life, Stuff and the Box." I have been divorced for more than 10 years and I had just seen former relatives at a dinner I was invited to. I think the piece was pretty funny and biting -- too biting. It would surely offend those old relatives, and I decided not to use it.

A while back, I wrote a story about my friend and co-worker Sara and the carpal tunnel operation she was having. The surgery worried me, because I really care for my young friend. Some people interpret my friendship with her in the wrong way. So I wrote "Love and Friendship" to explain my feelings. End result? A sappy essay that I'm glad I never submitted to an editor.

But sometimes I submit columns that I think are just fine and they get shot down. One that comes to mind is "Are You Ready to Order?" It was a story about two very different dining experiences, one really good, one really bad. At the time, my editor was Brandon Brady and I could tell he felt bad when he said, "You know, I just don't think your heart was in this." At first, I didn't agree, but when I went back and reread it, damn if he wasn't right.

CityBeat News Editor Greg Flannery is now my editor. He is a wise man. In November, I wrote an L-O-L called "They Closed," a story about all the downtown restaurant closings. Businessman and wanna-be politician Nick Spencer really took offense to the column and tore me to bits on his Web site, basically calling me a liar. I wanted to do a follow up and address some of Spencer's remarks. Greg's advice: "Always let the reader have the last word." Spencer has and will. My editor did me a favor.

Sometimes I'll do a favor for another writer myself. Susan Burke Steege submitted an essay about how, as a small child, she broke into a bottle of her -- I think -- grandparents' moonshine and got a little drunk. I don't remember much about the story or even the title of it, just that it was really cute. That's what I kept telling Susan, "This is really, really cute." She got my point. We try not to do cute here.

We also try not to simply fill up space, but maybe that's what I'm doing this week. I'm sure my editor will let me know.