I see fire

    When I was about 24, I gathered three shoe boxes and eight spiral notebooks full of poetry bits, lyrics, story starts, and all the other scraps of paper that I kept saying I should go through and edit, and I threw them all in the fireplace. Then I threw in several lit matches just to make sure I was serious.

    People are shocked when I mention this. Not that I mention it a lot.

    I had always been a firm believer in “never throw anything away” and “you never know when you will be inspired by an old note scribbled on a napkin or a verse taking up the bottom half of a page of biology notes.” Turns out, so have a lot of people.

    One day, though, I couldn’t stand the weight of all those old words anymore. I “knew” I should really go back through every slip of paper looking for gold, or at least pyrite. But what was supposed to be a help and inspiration was actually a guilt-inducing burden, a roadblock to further writing and the unencumbered exploration of new ideas.
    I had a glass of champagne while all that work turned into light and heat and smoke and ash.

    What a relief.

    Once in a while, I feel a vague regret: maybe I did incinerate something important. 

    Doubtful.