What Writers Keep

I am sitting in my writing space in a cubby corner of our home, where if I stand up and lean to my left, I can see the hills that rim the ocean, but no water. I can also see banker’s boxes filled with drafts of the first book of the Cooper Quartet, Dead Legend. I envisioned it with three protagonists, all relatives, each with their own memories and so point of view, and the only way I could achieve the clarity I wanted was to write each person’s story from beginning to end in pencil (so I could erase) on college-lined paper before weaving the stories together.

Which I did. I even have the matrix indicating where each section or chapter belongs, even though the book is published, and I don’t need the matrix or pencil-written pages anymore.

I still have my first novel ever in blue ballpoint pen, also remarkably short and poorly written. Maybe not for an eight-year-old. I can’t throw it out. It’s the beginning.

I have the first manuscript of Perfidia. Not the published Perfidia, but the one I typed on a Smith-Corona electric typewriter in my apartment in a rainstorm one Labor Day weekend, closing in on a thousand years ago. I adored that typewriter. The feel of it, the click of the keys, the ka-ching as I hit the carriage return.

But, oh my, the difficulty of revising, correcting spelling errors, or changing or adding scenes that required a typewriter eraser with a brush and reams of 20lb paper. I still have those versions, as well as copies submitted to an agent and publisher.

I can produce the first dot matrix printout of Dead Legend, compiled (as in all the pieces merged) on my Zenith Computer, the kind that required one to load a floppy disk of the program and a floppy on which to save the text. I have the 5.25×5.25-inch disks. They were truly floppy. I printed out text daily because floppies failed all the time. Now, the dailies sit in those banker’s boxes daring me to throw them out.

Then came laptops. I wrote the published version of Perfidia on a laptop in a hotel room in Nevada one summer while my husband worked. I printed it out once at Staples to edit it. It was so laborious that I began editing on the computer and never stopped. The very first print copy turned out to be a proof because right there, right on the second page, there was an error. Still, I treasure the first time I held it and still love the cover.

Now there are drafts of my books everywhere on my computer in files designed to keep them organized. Files that allow me to track the version. Files with formatted books, files for submitted books, files for … I keep them all. Even after the book is published.

Do I miss that first pencil-written page? The first printout? The first notes from reviewers crammed in the margins? Yes. Though by relying on my Remarkable for plotting and reviews, I still get the pencil-on-paper feel and the crammed reviewer’s notes in the margins.

It has been a journey from the world of pencils. But here I am with boxes of manuscripts, untold pages of pencil-written text, thousands of computer files, proofs, and copies of twelve published books and too many dreams to count later, wondering what will I ever do with all the detritus, or for that matter, those who inherit it.

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