Pack-rat or Simply A Saver? ;)

Many of the fellow scribblers I talk to, have agreed that you should seldom completely throw something you've written away. Stuff it in a drawer, crumple it in your desk, but by all means, never throw it away! :D I'm not suggesting you be a packrat, but do save things! :) Just today, as we were going through all our homeschool materials, I found a note-book entitled: "Rachel's Notebook (of warious and sundry items of wery little interest to the rest of the world)" Okay. So you could tell I had just finished reading "Pickwick" and was imitating Samuel Weller, but that's beside the point! I opened the book, and found so many things I had written a year or so ago, and forgot about! There was one poem entitled "Going To The Store" which detailed what it is like for large families at the grocery store. (needs new title) Then there was the one about Gracie playing dolls. I remembered writing them, and thinking they were awful, but now, in retrospect, the poems themselves were not at all bad! One of my favorite things was finding the "plan" for a story: "The Tale of Fairfax and Cloves" that I wrote for a Christmas gift for Sarah last year. It had started out to be a full-length novel, with a quirky plot. It ended up being a reasonable story, perfect for reading in an evening, and alot of things had changed. For instance, originally, the shop the principle characters owned was "Weaver and Webbley", but it changed to "Fairfax and Cloves". It was so fun to see that forgotten plan, and compare it to the final result! That is why I say never throw worthwhile things away! One of the finds I treasure most is the first few pages of my first draft of the first pages of "A Mother for The Seasonings" I was writing it from third person, the characters were drastically different, and now, every time I read it, I laugh! :) Save things! You will be amazed at how your writing will improve! If ever you are in a dry time with your writing, and think you are awful at it, just read back on some of these old compositions! I have a notebook of poems I wrote as a ten year old. It is dumbfounding to read most of them! And not in a good way. Check this one out:

"I'm sick of being sick because

It's fun being healthy. There are 8 people

In my family and we get sick a couple at a time.

So always take you vitamins."

(Or something along those lines) Can you believe that?!?! It wasn't even good blank verse, not to mention the kind I write now! But it really does boost your spirits to look back over the years and laugh at your writing away back then! :) -Rachel