PILES AND PILES AND PILES!

I have been cleaning through paper.  Oh yes - I keep all those little cute poems, sayings, scribbles I see and like - have done for years!  I write my own on scraps as they come to mind as well - you just never know when you are writing what you are going to need or when you are going to need it!

When we moved from the city I emptied a bunch of file cabinets of paper into some computer paper boxes without going through them first.  We we arrived here, all those boxes ended up in the back of the spare bedroom closet.  Those were "for later", for a "winter" project - you know the kind I mean - projects that you know you really should tackle, but you really are not so keen to do.

I pretty much forgot about those boxes until last week.  I hauled my old laptop out of another storage place and all of a sudden I had the urge to play a early computer game that I used to play on my laptop called "Kings Quest".  The first place I went looking for the old game was the spare room closet!

Guess that was my first mistake!  I waded through all those boxes and didn't find the game - but I did find folders and folders of paper.  I hauled out one box, then another, then another, and pretty soon I had lugged most of them up to my office area and I was sorting papers.

I found such interesting stuff - like that little paper of my Mother's that I posted about a couple of weeks ago on her anniversary.

 I started organizing things in piles - you know, - like investment papers;  old resumes ( which by the way I gladly tossed); paper road maps... okay so that is kind of weird  - I tossed a couple,  but kept a few!

What really was an eye opener turned out to be the pile I called "writing".  In this pile was every story I had ever written, finished or not, every poem, thoughts I had jotted down just in case - little events I had heard about somewhere that were interesting... research I had done for novels, or research I had done because I was thinking about writing something -  4 completed manuscripts, one of which that has been published...

The writing pile is actually 3 piles each 18 " or higher, and it doesn't even include the 731 posts I have written here on my blog over the past eight years or so.  I was stunned, quite frankly!

It's true, I have been writing stories since I was in grade school.  There is always a story running through my head. it really doesn't take much to get one going... but I had no idea I had actually written that much down on paper... and yes - I am quite forgetting the files on the computer that have yet to be printed.

It kind of shook me up.  Made me a little ashamed of myself.  Here I have all this work and I have not really done much with it.

For me, the need is to write, much more than to be read.  Blogging has helped me remember to share, but I am not always convinced that anyone really gives a hoot about reading what I write.

I am going to test the waters a bit.  I have promised myself to get organized - organize the three piles and the 731 bog posts, and the stuff running around in my head needing to get out.

Guess we will see how that goes!