Friday, September 18, 2009

The morgue of scraps

One frustrated scholarly author detailed how she edits and excises material. She doesn't want to discard it entirely, but she also doesn't want to use it in the present work, so she saves it in what she drily referred to as "the morgue of scraps." We all laughed. I have one of those -- bits of articles, stories, and ideas from heaven-knows-where, collected over the years on computer files and too good to toss. When computers changed from floppy discs to CD-rom to flash drives, over time some of these scraps became inaccessible (or not easily retrieved), so I resolved to let them go, like throwing out memories from a bygone relationship.

Do you have a morgue of scraps? Or is there a gentler name for it? Are all writers like packrats with yarn and fabric stuffed away in closets, attics and drawers, ready to be used "someday?"

Image from Little White Paw.

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