I spent this afternoon in the basement, going through box after box of stuff. Most of it will go straight to the dump, but some will go to the library of my local university, which has been the repository of my work for almost ten years.
So this is a good time to give you some advice for the other end of your writing career: Hang on to your rough drafts, correspondence, contracts, and anything else related to your writing career. Once your publisher brings a book out, the manuscript you suffered to produce will come back to you as "dead matter."
Don't throw it away. Buy a couple of banker's boxes at your local stationery store, and then contact your own university or college and see if it's interested in receiving such manuscripts.
This is not just to clear space in your filing cabinet. As a local writer, you are of some interest to your university. Future scholars may actually want to look at your drafts to trace your development. The material you donate has a financial value, usually set by by a third party who reviews it.
Once the value of your donation is set, the university will send you an official statement of that value. You can then include that statement when you file your income tax, and that should qualify you for a whacking great deduction off that year's taxes. So "dead matter" or not, documents from your writing have a little more to give...maybe more than you actually get from book sales.
This is the way it works in Canada, and I think the US is very similar. If not, please correct me. And don't throw your stuff away.
I keep a couple bankers boxes. When I did a proof-print and copy-edit (hard-copy), I just dumped the paper into the box.
The book proofs get the same treatment. Who knows, your grandkids might inherit a fortune from them.
Posted by: Bruce H. Johnson | October 04, 2010 at 08:25 AM