Clutter Management for Novelists – Don’t Bother

I confess – I am a pack rat.

Recently I came across some old letters from a college friend, letters I had completely forgotten about, that detailed a time I did not, and would not have remembered if I’d not seen it brought back to life in his words.

For decades I’ve lugged around a box of old canceled checks from 40 years ago. My wife has tried to make me throw them away–and I admit they are junk–but I can’t.

When I see a check I wrote to a particular store in Iowa city on a particular day in the winter of 1966, the name of that store brings back feel of the day, the tone of the week, the look of the season, the mood of the year, in a way that only a once-significant object can.

I see no social advantage in being this way–among those I love, I’ve suffered for it over the years. To everyone’s despair, my office space makes W.C. Fields’ work area in “The Bank Dick” look like a miracle of minimalist organization. From time to time I vow to throw everything out, all of it, every last scrap–but the urge passes.

And I say, “thank goodness.”

Why? Because every so often, I unearth something that energizes me with an jolt of memory not unlike the experience of having bitten into a tiny but powerful morsel of super hot chili.

I’ve never been big on keeping journals. But another memory starter I’ve persistently lugged around for years is a journal of the two years I spent in a certain Cambridge, Massachusetts, bar band. It’s right there in a smudgy old sketchbook, a daily record of everything that was going on in my life at the time–a lot, as it turned out. And this, I’ve come to realize, is gold.

If you are a fiction writer of any description–novelist or short story writer–you probably know by now that you end up living a little bit differently from most “normal’ humans. You find yourself (as Monet did, at his wife’s deathbed) coolly observing physical details in the most intensely emotional moments of living. You tend to lean toward raw experience over security and safe livelihood. You spend a lot more time by yourself than is considered “healthy.” And you can be tenaciously cold-blooded about protecting things other people don’t fully comprehend–and often aren’t in sympathy with–like your writing time.

It may be cutting myself too much slack, but I like to see my pack rat tendencies as useful, part of the overall personality set of the novelist. It may not make my life any easier or more comfortable, but it can feed my imagination when I need it most. That strikes me as one excellent reason for never throwing anything away.

What about you? Are you a pack rat? If so, I’m curious: do you feel it’s a benefit or a curse?

Tagged as: clutter, pack rat, writing a novel