Recycle, Reuse, Throw it Out—Maybe

I don’t consider myself a pack rat. Others may differ. Well, maybe I will admit to pack rat tendencies. But not the whole rat. I don’t have empty plastic yogurt tubs and months’ old stacks of newspaper cluttering up my home. I really do try to recycle and reuse, and throw out, if need be.

I am, however, a paper magnet. It’s a tendency acquired early in my writing career. I spot something in the newspaper or a magazine, clip it out and set it aside, thinking I might use that someday, in a story or a novel.

And I have. Here’s where recycling comes in. Back in 2005, I clipped a short article from the San Francisco Chronicle. The story concerned a stash of old wallets found in the rafters of a barracks at Camp Roberts, in central California. It’s a California National Guard base now, but during World War II it was an Army training base. The contents of the wallets dated back to that era, the 1940s. The theory was that the wallets had been stolen, all valuables removed, and the wallets then disposed of in the rafters. I was so intrigued by the story I kept it pinned to my bulletin board. And indeed, I did use the story in a Jeri Howard novel—Bit Player.

I started writing in the ancient times before computers and the internet, so I would stash all these clippings and assorted notes in file folders. Some of those folders date back decades and are still hanging around in file boxes, taking up space in my office. I really would like to purge that paper. But I am reluctant to get rid of anything that I might use someday. I know, I know, the mantra of a pack rat.

These days, with the internet, I can save the article onto my computer, or at least the URL. Saves paper and space, that’s for sure. I can even use my iPhone to scan documents. I have file folders of clippings and notes awaiting such action. Then maybe I can throw out all that paper and free up some space in my office.

There’s another kind of throwing out. I’ve excised scenes from novels and told myself the finished work is better for it. At times, though, I reuse a scene. In the Jeri Howard novel Nobody’s Child, Jeri gets shoved off a BART platform in San Francisco. That scene originally appeared in an early version of Till the Old Men Die. I really like the excitement of the scene, with Jeri’s narrow escape from an onrushing BART train. Too good not to reuse.

I also recycle and reuse characters. An earlier unpublished novel had a character named Lowell Rhine. He was a shifty character. I liked the name, so I recycled it in Cold Trail, using the moniker for a somewhat shady lawyer. As for that unpublished novel, and another lurking in my files, I have some recycling and reusing in mind.

Frequently characters who appear in my books wind up in other books. History professor Lindsay Page first appeared in the Jeri Howard novel Witness to Evil. Later she had her own book, my standalone novel What You Wish For. After attending my 50^th high school reunion, I wrote a novella, But Not Forgotten, about a semi-retired reporter named Maggie Constable, who attends her reunion, determined to solve a long-ago mystery. I like Maggie a lot, so she appeared in my most recent Jeri Howard book, The Things We Keep. Maggie is going to have a book of her own, as soon as I can get around to it.

And yes, I did write a short story about a pack rat. Entitled Pack Rat. I’m not as bad as the guy in the story. Really.