Dateline 9 Aug 2020:

I take a break from my regular blogging plans for a post to discuss a new phenomenon about my writing life and career. Well, it’s not much of a career, what with the few sales I have, but I’ll still call it a career.

I began this year starting each month posting my goals, and at the end of the month (or start of the following) posting how I did relative to my goals. This ended as life went in unpredictable directions and other pursuits pushed writing mostly aside for a while. I see light in life’s tunnel, however, and am close to getting back to my novel-in-progress.

So what is the new thing that has popped up that’s worth a blog post?

One of the things I’m trying to do to reduce clutter and downsize our possessions is look through the magazines we have accumulated and saved but probably never read. On shelves in the basement storeroom are between 750 and 1,000 magazines. That doesn’t include the National Geographics, which are probably another 500. I looked through these recently, counting a portion then estimating the total count on hand. I could be off by a hundred, I suppose.

Why do we have all of these? The Geographics are sort of understandable. Accumulated in the 1990s, all used, mostly from yard sales, we have about twenty years complete and many, many duplicates. I want to read these, as NG is a class magazine, very educational. When I inventoried these about ten years ago and discovered we had more duplicates than full years, I put them in inventory and kept them on the shelves. Yes, shelves, for we had enough NGs to fill three shelves, the duplicates taking up close to two of them. I suppose I thought I would have a use for them, perhaps in my writing. But now I see that I don’t, so I will be getting rid of them. Hate to simply trash them, so I hope to find a place to donate them or maybe sell them.

But I prate. Most of the other magazines on the shelves are not keepers in my mind. I’m not sure where Lynda stands on that. A few may be of value, and a few are keepers (such as the many years of WW2 history magazines my dad accumulated; I’d like to read them some day). These take up another two shelves. I would love to see those gone before long.

But I need to get to my point. I looked in my closet about two weeks ago, and my eyes were drawn to an upper shelf. There, tucked between notebooks, were a few magazines. “What are these” I said out loud. I pulled them out. One was the September 2007 issue of The Writer. I obviously picked this up at a bookstore. I’ve been reading it slowly, an article a day. While I’m gleaning much good information and many tips from it, once finished to recycling it will go. The other was a 2009 issue of Smithsonian Magazine. The cover story had to do with Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, who were born on either side of the ocean on the same day in 1809; it was a 200th anniversary issue.

I took this mag to the sunroom and have been reading it along with a book during my afternoon reading time. The magazine is excellent, the articles all of a high quality and educational. One was about channel/river pilots who guide large cargo ships from the ocean into the mouth of the Columbia River, a dangerous transit. As I was reading, an idea for a novel about this came to me. Another article followed the Freedom Riders and what had happened to many of them since those days of their brave actions. Immediately an idea for a novel, and an article, came to me. The magazine had several other interesting articles—plus, of course, the highlighted articles about Lincoln and Darwin. With each article a writing idea jumped out of the pages.

I finished the magazine Saturday afternoon. I left it on my book pile table when I left the sunroom, but that was an oversight. The next time I go back out there the magazine will also go straight to the recycling box.

How can I do this when I could use the magazine as the basis for books or articles?

Very simply, I have made the decision that I have enough writing ideas, for book-length works, in the queue that I shall never run out of ideas. If God gives me strength enough of mind and body to write for another twenty years (when I turn 88), I shall never run out of ideas. If I keep up my recent writing history of two books a year for twenty years I will not run out of ideas. If I up my production to three books a year and am able to go twenty-five years I will not run out of ideas. Why, therefore, should I accumulate more ideas?

The new ideas may, perhaps, be better books that what I already have lined up. Maybe, but I don’t think I will shift to new things until I finish the things already programmed.

I see the many ideas for writing projects I’ve accumulated as being similar to the great number of possessions in our house and directly analogous to the more than a thousand magazines on shelves. Much has to go. Writing ideas may be a single sheet in a notebook, or a computer file in the cloud, rather than bound paper on a shelf, but they are still clutter, and I’m at the point in life where I don’t need to add possessions, I need to reduce them.

So, good book or article ideas, I’m sorry to do this, but I am suppressing you. I’m driving you out of my mind. I’m not adding you to a notebook or file. Sorry, but you’re gone. Now, I ask God to give me the strength to reduce the clutter of ideas and see many of them become books.