Onwards and Forwards

Anyone who knows me will know that I rarely venture into the garage for eight legged reasons.

After my clear out in here the other day my thoughts turned to the files out there and I sent my trusty sidekick on a mission to find said files.

He made several trips and the chair behind me sagged under the weight of at least two dozen folders, a box file, a ring binder and two of my dad’s old desk diaries.

My new shredder has been busy. It’s a huge improvement on the old one and doesn’t throw a wobbly if I put in more than three sheets or have it going for more than five minutes.

There are several correspondence files. I kept every acceptance (and a few helpful rejection letters) from the 1980s onwards. Most of them have been shredded, but I read through them first and I’ve kept a few of the special ones.

I found four novels. One about the English Civil War (kept that but shredded the two carbon copies and the original draft), a horror, a children’s book and some kind of saga I don’t even remember writing. There’s a letter from a publisher about a book I wrote for children with a fantastic title – if only I could find the book – or even remember what it was about.

There are the notes I made about Native Americans and their customs and the early settlers in America for a 120,000 word novel I wrote for a competition. Where the novel is, I have no idea.

My husband used to tell me never to chuck anything I wrote away and he used to hide the stuff I gave him to take to the tip. But there were things I got past him that he was unable to rescue. Silly me.

I’m not bothered about all the hundreds of short stories I’ve shredded, but I wish I’d kept the books. Ah well, never mind. There’s always something new to work on, new ideas, new inspiration.

Onwards and forwards and all that . . .