I’m looking back on old art pieces that stalled out, got trunked, went into limbo…whatever we call it, most artists have some.
Why they stalled? All reasons are valid:
‘I made it for someone, we lost touch, I’m embarrassed by them now, they’re embarrassed by me, I’m not finishing this!’
‘I bit off way more than I can handle with this piece and now I need to STOP until I learn how to do this well.’ Usually meaning I forget about it for a decade.
‘I lost interest in this theme/technique. I will now kick it into a corner until I fall in love with it again or I give it away to someone who does.’
‘I can’t find any gallery to take this and no one on Etsy will bite, so I’m not making these anymore.’
Then some years later: ‘Hey, this isn’t terrible, I should just finish it.’
Or: ‘This is pathetic. I’m taking my name off it & either donating it or recycling it for parts!’
I find old manuscripts are very like artwork in my reactions to them. Some I love and am willing to reboot. Others…not so much.
I looked at my first finished space opera from 1987 recently. There are some good parts, but I was trying way too hard. And I did something shortsighted: I wrote the ending tale of a massive story arc I was just beginning to plot out.
33 years later the whole story has shifted immensely. That ending tale no longer fits in the mythos, and it has been upstaged by newer, better, Hugo-Award-winning stories with the exact theme (which we both kinda stole from a couple of early 80s fantasy novels.)
I’m re-reading my first effort now with an eye toward stripping out those good bits and shoveling them into something else. I have a novella in the same universe that could use those ideas to become better (and more marketable) than both parts separately.
Art & writing are so entangled for me. This piece, ‘Flame Banner’ is from a fantasy culture that has been so reworked even the heraldry no longer applies to that particular city state.
It has another adaptation here.
By now, it’s probably just personal heraldry.
This piece, once called ‘Shades’, was proto-Furry when I started it in 1992, based on the very funny 4-year-old son of a friend. If I showed you a picture of him now, you would still see him in this dragon. But the friend and I drifted apart more due to my failings than theirs, and so this piece no longer has any emotional anchor. I can love it for what it could be, and finish it.
I can be as ruthless with my art as I am with writing. ‘Three Gates Surcoat’ was finished in 1993, my first large fiber art piece. It entered a few shows, got worn as part of a few hall costumes. It’s a gold-shot green cloth I bought during my first SCA Estrella War trip in 1987, embroidered with silk, glass beads, and freshwater pearls. The embroidered front panels hint at magical doors and fantasy journeys. 
But it is firmly pre-book-art , and I have no use for it as it is now. It’s getting torn apart and reworked into an actual fiber art book with the same theme. And it will probably sell for around the same $1000 I wanted to charge for this piece. The pearls and glass beads will be salvaged, along with the tatted shoulder ornaments and lining fabric.
Non-crafting people don’t understand the reasons to hang onto this stuff. Sometimes, it’s not hoarding. That teal green fabric in the background? Parts of it also ended up in ‘Copper Star’ from 2018.
Craft supplies and finished works are capital investments.