This stack of drafts was in a copy box in my basement. The novel was edited/revised seven times. One of the drafts is missing because I bound and gave it away to a reader.

One of the toughest things about being a writer is getting rid of clutter. While it’s a given we need our project materials, as well as the things that inspire us (anyone remember that picture of Ray Bradbury’s office?), there’s more: old projects and stacks of drafts.

While it’s gotten much easier since the age of electronic documents (I can keep drafts in a compact form now), there are still times when paper accumulates…and forget about years ago, when everything was done on paper. My most recent project has been to take paper drafts of stories, scan them into PDFs, and store them that way.

Bad Apple took two years to write and revise, then another two years of polish once the novel was sold to Dark Alley Press. What resulted were seven giant drafts peppered with notes and Post-It flags, wine and coffee stains. A few years back I took one of the early drafts, bound it, and gave it to a reader as a gift–but other than that, they were all there.

Scanning these all to PDF, I felt, was going to be a waste of time and energy–am I ever going to look at these again?Who is going to give a crap, anyway? So…I made a deal with myself. I photographed the pile. Just so I’d always have it to remember.

Then off to the shredder it went.

Bad Apple was published by Dark Alley Press in 2012. You can get your copy here: http://a.co/htRbr9v

A close-up of just HOW MANY Post-It flags gave their lives for this endeavor…

I don’t know which one this is from, but clearly the “Beckitt is going back to Cali” is a joke (she never makes it further than New York state and she wasn’t from California to begin with.)

These edits were made sometime in the early fall of 2011. The email on Nov. 1 was probably one of the many follow-up emails my editor, Nanette, and I exchanged during the revision process.

The final round of drafts post-acceptance (there were two or three before the novel was sold).

I’ll admit…I may not let go of this one just yet.

After I tossed everything (except this ONE — which I may not keep for too much longer) — I celebrated with a glass of wine. This is one of the wine glasses Nanette (my editor) made for me as a gift when the book was completed and ready to go to press.