Barbara J. Hamby

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Papers Everywhere

Today, I organized a three-foot stack of papers: my writing, writing tips, and helpful writing samples. All of these are now filed and labeled in two three-ring binders. The fatter one is titled “Work in Progress”. Its thinner mate will be carried to my critique group and writing class and contains only what I need for each of those two activities.

Poems, essays, short stories and the memoir stories and poems have been separated and identified. Work in Progress includes everything that seems to need tweaking, as well as some unfinished work.

Another three-foot stack of writing consists of travel journals for all the trips Al and I have taken since we’ve been together. Getting all those arranged and filed may not take a whole day, but it could take even longer, who knows?

When I first started using computers, I assumed everyone would be cutting down on paper consumption. How wrong can you get? Modifying writing online doesn’t work for me or for most of my writing friends. We have to see it in ink on paper.

Here’s a poem I wrote fourteen years ago on that subject. It took me more than fourteen minutes to find it, because I couldn’t remember its title.

Litter Bunnies

Among their other disgusting habits
writers’ papers breed like rabbits
creating instead of litters, litter
totally ruining the erstwhile glitter
of an efficient, organized, office area.
Sometimes they even reach out to bury a
writer struggling for recognition,
always oblivious to this condition.