A little secret here: I have forever harbored the quiet notion that my body of work would one day be important enough to require a scholarly archive. So ever since 1993 and the Sports Illustrated for Kids book Over the Edge, I have saved every hard copy revision of every manuscript I've ever written (with the exception of In-line Skating Made Easy, which I knew would one day require a great deal of explanation).
I stored each set of manuscripts, including all ten revisions of Into Africa, in covered plastic bins on shelves in my garage, right outside my office door. When the director of the Martin Dugard Library eventually called, they would be waiting.
Thirty years and more than two dozen books later, that's a lot of bins.
My manuscripts needed more and more garage space. They took over room set aside for Christmas decorations, children's photos and school awards, and the stack of 1980's LP's awaiting their chance to be lifted from the dusty shelf and placed next to the turntable in my office — space permitting.
But a few months back Callie and I took a look at our garage and realized it has become an utter shithole. The lone saving grace is the pool table with the beer-stained green felt. Otherwise, chaos. So we decided to remodel. In one month, a demo crew will rip my handmade pine shelves from the wall and replace them with sleek organizers and new flooring. My sanctum sanctorum garage office will remain untouched. Everything else is going to change.
The garage renovation is the perfect time to throw away the stuff we don't need or have forgotten we owned. In preparation for the big day, Callie and I ordered a large dumpster. It is now parked outside our house. We have begun the slow process of what is staying and what must go.
I got around to the manuscript bins within an hour. Took a few down to have a look inside. Each had a strip of duct tape on the outside with the book's name written in Sharpie. So it was that I took a walk down memory lane, from the box entitled "Chasing Lance" to "Killing Jesus" to "Surviving the Toughest Race on Earth," in no particular order. Old maps and photos, handwritten notes from editors, contracts, airplane tickets, Underground stubs — opening each bin was a walk into the past. I traced the arc of my career. Every successive bin brought forth a unique memory.
I was surprised to realize that I did not feel elation, but instead the awareness that I was hanging by a thread those many years, hustling to finish a book so I could begin another and keep a roof over our heads. I walked away from the corporate world in my early thirties and was determined never to go back. This meant taking whatever writing jobs came my way. I remember the jealousy of seeing other writers forge bigger careers, the despair of paychecks arriving long overdue, and the struggle to go from a guy with absolutely no training — no MFA, journalism degree, newspaper experience — into someone determined to make a full-time living as a writer. In-line Skating Made Easy was written in three weeks for a $4,000 payday. Survivor was written in forty days on an island off the coast of Borneo for not much more, at the exact same time I was finishing Farther Than Any Man. To Be A Runner was written on spec, meaning I wrote it for free, desperate to find a publisher. There were magazine assignments, works for hire, bad screenplays.
And on. These were contained in those clear plastic bins. Surely, this archive would dazzle any future biographer.
I threw it away.
All of it.
The archive was a fable. I told it to myself as inspiration and oxygen, fueling my hopes and dreams. I didn't work in a job with promotions or other indications of achievement, so I invented my own. Those manuscripts were solid evidence that I had done something to be proud of — took a risk, asked Callie to come along for the ride, and put books out into the world. But more important, they paid the mortgage, bought the baseball gloves, paid the tuitions.
But manuscripts are just pieces of paper scrawled with red pencil. It was nice to have one last glimpse and so cleansing to hurl them into the dumpster.
Yet I'm not throwing away everything in those bins. I also had a habit of tossing odds and ends of daily life in with the manuscripts, almost all having to do with our family. I thought writing was my life, but it turns out those third grade report cards, expired Disneyland passes, and Father's Day messages are much more important. Pictures of me and Callie, Little League game balls, playbills from the Arroyo Vista Children's Theater production of Hansel and Gretel. I'm saving those.
I always thought I became a writer so I could see the world and write books. I'm living that dream. Calene now travels along with me. But becoming a writer also means that I was working from home in this cluttered garage, strengthening my marital vows in the many hard and simple ways a relationship grows. I watched my boys become men. I loved just being with them, watching them, laughing with them, driving them to and from school until that horrible day when they got their driver's licenses and that thirty minutes in the morning and evening of listening to their hopes and dreams was no longer required. Those memories will never go away.
Who needs an archive?