NEVER THROW IT AWAY

I last wrote about making notes and keeping them--hopefully, where you can find them. Since them I read an article online about an author who lives in a 2-bedroom apartment in New York City, has just turned her office into the new baby's room, and now keeps her ideas on slips of paper, napkins, whatever, in decorative hat boxes. Mentioning keeping all these notes reminded me of a lesson I learned several years ago--one I hope you already know.

Don't throw anything away--not those notes, story starts, essays rejected many times---nothing.

We have moved quite often in our almost 32 years of marriage. On one move of quite some distance, I knew I needed to lighten the load, really cut down those 88 boxes (my husband does exagerate) coming out of my office. Therefore, I really cleaned out those files. I scanned through some of the old stories, essays, articles, clip files. I'd never completed them, or sold them, and the idea clippings hadn't been used, so I won't miss them, right? Do I need to tell you I still have thoughts of several stories, etc. I should have kept, picked them up again, and completed?

I have a new rule: never throw it away. As you might imagine, I don't have enough room in my office for all the files to hold all of these saved items. There are plastic tubs in our storage area of the workshop and four are in my walk-in closet in the office. One of these days I will set up a "program" of some sort to catalog it all, and not have to sit in the middle of the closet, searching through files looking for something I know I saved. Until then, I am not throwing it away.

And while I am sorting through those files, hopefully, I will find the beginning of a book a former student says he gave me to critique--just as I was giving up my teaching of that particular class and two months before I packed everything up for another of those moves.

I hope I haven't thrown it away.