Do notes count as a beginning?

Do notes count as a beginning, especially decades old notes?  I'm going to say no unless I find that I've actually started one of the stories.

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I've been thinking of the possibility of doing a series of short stories on the dead interacting with the living as a matter of course, in worlds where the continuing existence of the dead is obvious.

1. The dead can be called back to testify about their murder by licensed mediums.  They are able to be dispersed by exorcists.  A new means of murder is driving spirits insane as they cross, leaving them unable to testify.  A medium's husband uncovers the dastardly doings.  [OK, I think I started one sort of like this.  I'm still saying these notes are not a beginning.]
2. The dead are able to "take life" from the living, that is, they are able to sterilize people if they are giving a conduit by, say, a person's spouse (who wishes no children) or sibling (who want the family estate to go to their kids).  In this story a rooster-pecked wife has sterilized her husband to shut him up.
3. In this story environmental terrorist are killing people in new developments.  They have learned that their civilization's quality of life is deteriorating because the wheel of life has been disrupted.  Souls that should be born as animals are being born as human too soon because there are no longer enough high level animal lives available.  There should be three alternating points of view - cop searching for terrorists, terrorists, coyote being reborn.
4. New lives can only be made by capturing dead spirits to be reborn, which can only be done by homosexuals.  Explore the resulting difference in family structure, social structure, and behavior.
5. The dead must be placated as they unravel and must be prevented from inhabiting fetuses, for people so inhabited go mad before they reach adulthood.  Difficulties when a family won't let go of their dead and it starts endangering the neighbors.
6. The dead can be collected and used as informants or collectors of information.  The living seek to protect dead relatives from being used this way.
7. The dead have to be collected as toxic waste and properly stored until they have sufficiently disintegrated.  Improper transportation or storage of dead can cause contamination that must be remediated.  Use of phrase "half-death" as analogy to "half-life" for radioactivity.
8. The dead can inhabit micro-computers and children learn to access them and use them for comfort in latch-hey situations.  A young girl murders her father or grandfather in order to gain his company through the machine.
9. Prisoners are used to care for the dead.  A prisoner is aided in escape by the dead he/she has been tending, but returns when he/she discovers that they were the only ones who ever valued him/her enough to make a sacrifice for him/her.  
10. Actors vie to be preserved as storytellers.
11. "Blood Foundation" guards liberated by radical student intellectuals.  [I'm guessing the government or a company is using blood to tie the dead to a location as guards.]
12. A talisman will allow a murder victim to inhabit their murder's body.  A woman is in love with a woman who cares for her, but is only interested in men.  So she gets a talisman and tries to provoke her own murder, with the thought that then they can marry.
13. The dead can possess the living, but only if they are susceptible.  Some are so susceptible that they are possessed by multiple spirits.  Psychologists and counselors seek "harmony cures" for multiply-possessed patients.