Decluttering has long been a buzzword and a recent book 'Goodbye Things' by Fumio Sasakia suggests all he needs is a bed, a table, his MacAir and a smart phone. Why keep paper? Why have books? You scan everything important to you and read books digitally.
Well yes, but you can only do that if your laptop is decluttered too. At the moment I only have 4GB of space because of my vast quantity of photographs and yes those can be stored in the iCloud, or on external drives and I do every so often, when big warnings flash up. But it still requires time and the will to declutter a laptop.
Last week my husband suggested I look through our store cupboard in the basement. We live in a 67 sq. metre flat so the store cupboard is vital… where else would I keep the ironing board, the vacuum cleaner and my extra stash of chocolate? It also houses boxes and boxes of old manuscripts neatly tied up and labelled with string and all the said research and reviews that go with each book.
It was going well. I hauled down the next box and there lay my very first novel together with a letter from my editor dated 25th May 1987 telling me they had printed 2500 copies of A Sudden Summer. What struck me was the date ... almost exactly 30 years ago to the month. A photograph lay across the letter taken of us on the day the novel came out. How young we both look and a bit uncanny that the girl on the cover seems to have the exact hairstyle I had then.
What struck me too was the editor's jaunty tone in her letter. 'May this be the first of many books for you. For you’ve got it, babe!'
She’s to blame. If it weren’t for Dr Annari van der Merwe I wouldn’t still be writing books thirty years on. Thank you Annari for your patience. What an intricate and wonderful labyrinth you caused me to follow with your ball of string.
Well you’ve guessed it. Could I tear up this manuscript even more covered in tipex and tape? Not when scrawled across the first page, she had also written… Keep this under lock and key. One day you will be able to sell it to the University of Texas in Austin for a grand sum. Not so! But still I slipped the crinkly onion skin paper back into the box and locked the door to the storeroom and all the book memories for yet another day.
In two days time, thirty years on, and I’m not sure how many books later, I have a very different one coming out – a picture book, My Daddy is a Silly Monkey, for very young readers. It’s come full circle. The same publisher, Tafelberg, who trusted me with my first novel has bought the South African Rights. It’s a book about the chaotic yet wonderful relationship between a busy father and a daughter that I saw emerge between my own son and his daughter at time when he was juggling his complicated life. Carol Thompson’s illustrations explode with energy and humour and thanks to Janetta Otter-barry and her team, the book will come into the world this week on 4th May 2017 just 3 weeks short of my thirty year entrance into the world of writing.
No doubt in years to come, I will sit in the same storeroom looking at yet another box of papers … my hands willing but my spirit weak.
Clutter… the English psychoanalyst and design teacher Jane Graves wrote in ‘The Secret Life of Objects’ is always about memory, so therefore about emotion and sentiment. Tidying, then, is intimate work.
If this is only my paperwork attempt, what about the objects? Get rid of multiples... says Fumio Sasakio. Four pairs of scissors is too many. You only need one that works and you will always know where it is. Hmmm... if only.
www.diannehofmeyr.com
Twitter: @dihofmeyr
And on Facebook
If this is only my paperwork attempt, what about the objects? Get rid of multiples... says Fumio Sasakio. Four pairs of scissors is too many. You only need one that works and you will always know where it is. Hmmm... if only.
www.diannehofmeyr.com
Twitter: @dihofmeyr
And on Facebook
