THE ARCHIVE: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Files generate filing. So do I have a filing cabinet?
   My archive is digital.
   But there’s another archive. Made up of papers, scraps, notes, articles. This is the original archive. It exists across rooms, across time, across space, across offices. In some ways, the paper archive represents all the office layouts I’ve ever had.
   Data. Information. Scraps. The paper archive is where ideas go to die. I write story ideas down on paper and file them on my desktop. That is the top of a real desk. I suppose it’s a memory cache, of sorts.
   Gradually I type the written notes up, and they enter the Matrix. What happens to the paper notes after that? They are checked – both sides of the paper – and then they are shredded. To be sure I’ve checked them, I scribble along the used notes in circles – line by line. Any plain text left over is dealt with right there and then or at another time, depending on the nature of the information.
   I may have to stand up and leave the office to head to my library for further research. Not all research takes place online. I’ll return, coffee to hand, with the coffee well-isolated from the electricals, and complete my research by scrawling yet another note. And when that note is finally transferred to the digital archive, I scribble more circles on the paper. Then, inevitably, it’s off to the shredder we go, down in the kitchen.
   Keep your shredder away from the room in which you store documents. That’s an added safeguard against shredding the wrong thing. I’ve yet to shred the wrong thing. Quite rightly, I once shredded an entire novel.
   But wait a bit, you cry.
   If you cache your paper archive on your actual wooden desktop, and then deal with notes line by scribbled line, there can’t be a paper archive beyond the small stack of sheets on your desk. Ah. How quaint a notion that is.
   My paper archive isn’t just about story notes. There’s correspondence. I’m a writer, damn it, and I still send letters to people. Hell, people even reply.
   And there’s official correspondence. I once talked my way out of a computerised tax-dispute simply by turning up armed with paperwork dating back years. (They were having none of it over the phone.) Admittedly, incoming government paperwork is on the decline. But there’s enough of it around to keep handy in the event of a horrendous mistake.
   Miscellaneous stuff. Yes, there’s all that. Of course there is. I have a file category for that in the digital archive. Let’s just say the paper equivalent is far less tidy. But I see that I didn’t answer a question.
   Do I have a filing cabinet?
   A small one. I dimly recall clearing it out in recent years. The problem with clutter is that it’s so cluttered. The time has come to sift through the piles of paperwork and shred the absolute fucking shit out of anything that is useless.
   Blunt? Let me tell you how I really feel. This miscellaneous pile of bullshit becomes a miscellaneous pile of bullshit with time. I can’t throw it out, in case the paperwork is still useful. Time must pass. It’s the only cure for the huge stack of paperwork. Wait for as much of it as possible to grow obsolete, and then pounce.
   The shredder stands by, silent, obedient, waiting for the moment. The cull. A call to arms. I think it’s high-time since the last time. The problem is…sifting through the paper stacks takes a miniature eternity.
   And the solution…goes for recycling. Bulky stacks of paper disappear. Space is reclaimed. And I am all for recycling the limited space I have. This provides more room for books. Books, technically, have an archive all to themselves. My library.
   As I type, my library is split across four rooms and a cupboard. This is the best of a bad situation. A small library encloses my office. I type from a book-lined alcove. It is by far the best office layout I’ve ever had.
   Not perfect, it’s true. But damn close.
   And the main library lives across the hall. I am only reorganising my bookshelves in the sense that a few cubbyholes are taken up by stacks of paper. Those are in need of serious fixing. I’ve yet to shred the wrong thing.
   Oh, I was right to shred an entire novel. I kept the good bit in my files. There are working prints of my stories. I like to read those physically once I’m done writing. Typos that evade electronic spellchecking do exist. They seem easier to spot on paper.
   To the handy piece of advice from C.S. Lewis about reading your work aloud, I must add emphasis in this digital world to another obvious requirement – read your work in print. Once I’m done fixing the fixable, I dispense with the working print. I’m not precious about that. It takes up too much space.
   I’m in a mood to remove clutter. Yes, I keep lines of books in front of lines of books on deep bookshelves. What of it? Yes, I keep far too much paperwork in my so-called paperless office. It’s not that I want to hang onto this stuff. I really don’t. Sometimes you need it.
   The Digital Age dispensed with that absurdity of the Stone Age – the original manuscript. I don’t write stories out in full. Just notes. If you write in longhand to solidify the main story idea, that’s fine. Get it down. Fix it on the page. Build on that foundation.
   How many of my original handwritten stories are still around the place? I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. I’ve been told that I write like a spider going backwards on acid – in terms of my actual scribble as well as the content. Whether related to handwriting or to the ideas conveyed by the handwriting, the notion of an LSD-dosed spider dipped in ink set loose upon the world…
   Yes, the notion covers what I do, quite nicely.
   I face hours, nay, days of work in setting out the paper archive for demolition. What will stay? Should everything go? Is there anything written down that hasn’t been transferred across to the digital realm?
   My knowledge of the archive is patchy. I can think of, perhaps, two items that are missing in action. Again, I resist the temptation to rely upon my faulty memory. Though, it was recently drawn to my attention that I once reconstructed a bundle of misplaced story notes from memory…
   When I found the original notes, I realised that I carry too many story ideas in my head. I fix them there. It’s my very own very personal very portable brain archive. This is the problem with being a writer. So many story worlds die with you, if you don’t write them down. Not enough time.
   Fixing things firmly in my mind, I was shocked to discover the fixing was so damned useful. Repeating stories in my head, over and over, improved the cohesiveness across time. The missing story notes were so similar to the reconstructed notes that I was better off relying on the reconstructed ones. At least they were typed up.
   I was then told…
   Y’know, people generally don’t do that.
   It is a failing. Writers carry ideas around in the head. I carry them around for far too long. Instead, I should be like the writers who scribble everything down all the time. No need for a paper archive, then.
   Would my archive become paperless as a result of this change?
   Bless your hearts for thinking so. I still have a printer, and a large stack of ink cartridge bullets to fire from the printing gun. Damn it, I am that most digital of writers – the kind of scribbler who will always run a papery office.
   I’d love to go paperless. But reality intrudes, even this far into the Digital Age. I’ll go a wee bit mair paperless, aye, it’s true, for I’ll be shredding. Not entirely sure what I’ll be shredding or how far back it all goes.
   Blasts from the past. How much of the fossil pile will remain relevant? I am heartless when it comes to the removal of once-important items. And I say that staring at a pile of nonsense sitting on my desktop right now. I’ll be sweeping that downstairs in the next few minutes.
   For once, this archival talk turns to paper, to shredding, to recycling. There’s a reckoning to be had over on the digital side of things, it’s true. But that clutter merely clogs up a hard drive. It’s rooms I’m clearing out, this time around.
   Rooms. Memories. The memories of the arrangement of sheets of paper in clusters, as well as the memories in those piles, are all about to be cleaned up. Slowly. I wish I could just take the lot to a bonfire. But I might throw away one treasure in a stack of dross. And we can’t have that.
   It’s possible to recover a deleted computer file. Not so easy with the paper sheets falling from stout bookshelves as though they are yellowing leaves falling from the trees outside. Shocker. I’m in an autumnal mood in autumn, and it’s time for some sweeping.