I’ll keep trying. I’m sinking though….
A lot of it has gone now.
Well, I’ll tell you and then be done with it.
Remember I was going to do some research into the names of some people quoted in an essay I was intending to write about? Maybe you don’t but I do. I found them online and wrote about them with my reactions and LOST my copy. Aargh!
And now I can’t find the essay that triggered my search. I’ve also lost my personal phone book. I think I’m losing stuff in the sea of files I am drowning in. I may not find anything again until I pack it all to go to the university (Manitoba). Does anyone remember that the first shipment I sent them included a dead mouse and three acorns? They remembered and told me. Thst’s how I know.
So I’ll go on with what I remember and my reactions. I mean, I did have something to say. That’s what blogs are for: to give meaning to my life, however simple and banal and forgettable it may be—is.
I‘m getting there.
The essay was about writers’ files, i.e. the thoughts and memos and notes and the original draft and then the final copy. The people who were quoted told the writer what happened to their files and how they felt about them. You can understand why I was interested. I keep finding bits of mself in notes and comments and first drafts and even stuff that ends on the cuttting room floor, when one is asked to cut a page or a paragraph, Heaven forbid to re-write. I remember once I was told by my editor to rewrite the entire last chapter of a book. It was HARD to do, but critics’ reviews called it the best chapter of the book, so my editor was right. That’ s what editors are for. Sometimes when you are so intent on the garden, you neglect to see the weeds still cluttering it. Most of my writing is a compost heap created to help other, better writers create. I‘m old enough to see that now.
All this is relevant to my current situation as I gather my last files for the archives. I have to be the editor. I’s not easy.
I am comforted by the fact that I don’t have to throw out old copy. I can keep it to re-read. When I leave, my family (my Literary Executor) can just throw the papers in a dumpster.
Very tidy.