Treasures In A Box: What Do You Keep?

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The Growing Basketball Net
That's Not My Dog
Gramps
Dream and the Past


What do these 4 items have in common?  I wrote them eons ago AND I still have my original versions.  In fact, The Growing Basketball Net is a children's story I wrote and illustrated at the ripe age of ten. (Cover art below.)

My Cover Illustration,
© Barbara V. Evers, All rights reserved
Last week, I needed to find a short story I wrote in 2008.  I had looked for it before but couldn't find it.  I knew I had not thrown it away. The list at the beginning of this post is of stories I wrote between the ages of ten and sixteen.  If I have them, you know I must have a story written six years ago.

Determined to find the missing story, I pulled out the boxes where I store my writing.  I dug through notebooks, rediscovering stories I'd written and the beginnings of stories whose plots I've forgotten. I wish I knew what I planned when I started these stories.  There were so many unfinished works.

I did find the story I needed...in the notebook I had checked before, over and over again. But that's ok.  While digging through the box, I decided to finally organize the stories into file folders.  I have ones for grade school writing, junior high (when I wrote my first novel), high school, and my early twenties.  After that, each story has it's own folder, mainly because these stories hold more promise.  These folders contain stories I work-shopped in writing classes, conferences or critique groups, I still have the feedback notes from my fellow writers.  It feels great to have it organized.

An illustration in The Growing Basketball Net
© Barbara V. Evers, All rights reserved
Now I just need to set up my office.  That's another story for another day.

What treasures do you have stored away?  Why are you keeping them?  Are they organized?

Comments

Valerie norris said…
I don't think I kept any of my grade school or high school writing, except for the crap that made it into literary journals. Horrid stuff! But most everything else, yeah, I've kept it. Haven't kept writing workshop comments, though. Can't imagine how many more file drawers I'd need!
July 9, 2014 at 11:58 PM
Barbara V. Evers said…
I don't have every last comment made from workshops, but I do have a lot. I'm sure I'll be recycling those pages as the volume gets to be too much.
July 10, 2014 at 12:22 PM
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