Paper Towel, June 3, 2011, Jeffrey Simmons

I have a small file cabinet under my desk that has in it scraps of paper with notes—on notebook paper, printer paper, index cards, Post-It notes, and even (yeesh) napkins. Early drafts of stories—from a time when I wrote everything long hand first, and then typed them up—are in there. Little bits of research that I printed out, glanced at, and then decided to ignore. Pictures I took out of magazines.

There’s another pile on my bookshelf that’s twice the size of my mid-sized cat.

Why am I keeping it all? I thought about throwing it away, recently, READ MORE >