Last week I tackled my writing room – moved furniture, went through files, cleaned and reorganized. I had three reasons for this insanity. First, because my heavy desk was blocking the heat source and with the recent frigid weather, I could hardly type in there. Second, I was running out of file space, even with an embarrassing number of file drawers. Third – and most important – I was trying not to obsess about my upcoming book launch. Not to obsess, not to google the book title repeatedly, not to bother my wonderful publicist (who just might be getting a little annoyed with me).
I’m only half done, but the job is pretty much what I expected. I’m throwing away a lot, recycling a lot, donating a lot (someone might want those three-ring binders, right?) I’m not very sentimental about stuff, but I do have filled a box labeled “Stuff I don’t need, never use, and can’t bear to throw away.”
The most interesting finds are the notebooks. When I started writing fiction fifteen years ago, people told me to always carry a notebook to jot down thoughts and observations and ideas. I rarely write more than a paragraph by hand; I much prefer working on the computer, but still I took that advice to heart. So as part of the clean-up, I gathered those notebooks. There are nineteen of them ranging from big to tiny. Thumbing through them, I found sentences that ended up in a published novel or story, intact, like my friend Irene’s observation years ago – “I didn’t take the interstate for a whole year. I couldn’t merge.” – which a character says in my first novel. I also found terrible sentences, and some interesting advice to myself, like “Too sappy; dark is better.”
I also found twelve new notebooks, mostly presents from friends and family. That is particularly generous, since they know that my always carrying a notebook means it’s even more likely that they’ll end up in a story. Read More
I’m only half done, but the job is pretty much what I expected. I’m throwing away a lot, recycling a lot, donating a lot (someone might want those three-ring binders, right?) I’m not very sentimental about stuff, but I do have filled a box labeled “Stuff I don’t need, never use, and can’t bear to throw away.”
The most interesting finds are the notebooks. When I started writing fiction fifteen years ago, people told me to always carry a notebook to jot down thoughts and observations and ideas. I rarely write more than a paragraph by hand; I much prefer working on the computer, but still I took that advice to heart. So as part of the clean-up, I gathered those notebooks. There are nineteen of them ranging from big to tiny. Thumbing through them, I found sentences that ended up in a published novel or story, intact, like my friend Irene’s observation years ago – “I didn’t take the interstate for a whole year. I couldn’t merge.” – which a character says in my first novel. I also found terrible sentences, and some interesting advice to myself, like “Too sappy; dark is better.”
I also found twelve new notebooks, mostly presents from friends and family. That is particularly generous, since they know that my always carrying a notebook means it’s even more likely that they’ll end up in a story. Read More