Moving 2.0 - Cleaning and sorting continues.





 

Today was office day, or rather, “…I wrote this crap day?”  Actually it was, “…this is so brilliant why am I not a famous writer day?”

I just emerged from six hours of pouring over old manuscripts. Some were in such infancy I am puzzled as to why I saved them. Others are so full and robust, it’s a wonder I’m not doing this full time with a hearty bank account and my picture on the cover of WRITER’S DIGEST.

Again I discovered my mother’s book, and a journal she kept until a few weeks before she died. Skimming her entries, I sought the happy ones about my daughters and skipped the doldrum-ones about getting old and being alone.

I’m also doing something I thought I’d never do, I’m throwing books away. They are books about writing which are so archaic in their directives, no one wants them. I mean really, do I want to save a book which outlines the whole over the transom SASE thing and then tells me to call the agent if I don’t get a reply in the mail within two weeks.

It kills me to toss a book, even the paperbacks with flaky yellowed pages that smell of musty neglect because no one has opened and flipped through so they can breathe a little reader's breath. 

It will be a mighty task to move the books I am keeping and set my office up again. But, to get back to what I love most, my own crappy brilliance, is what I am really looking forward to. Who needs dishes in the cabinets and sheets on the bed? Writing is what it's all about.

 

Have you ever thrown books away? And if you did, how did it make you feel?