Yesterday, cleaning around the office, I went through a pile of papers. There, at the bottom, was the galleys for “Make-Believe.” A few months ago after going through the galleys for misplaced punctuation and misspelled words I left the papers there, and other things–from job postings to work spreadsheets to store supply orders–were placed atop.
I wanted to keep the galleys. So, I made a scrapbook for them.
I went to Office Max, picked up a binder and page protectors, loaded the galleys, sheet by sheet, into the page protectors, and made a little scrapbook. Then I printed off the original pitch, the revised outline, and several e-mails–some from the editor, some from people who read the story–and those e-mails, too, went into the binder. Once the story’s out, if I receive e-mails on it then, those too will be printed out, shoved into a page protector, and filed away in the scrapbook.
I don’t know if other writers do this–save the galleys, save the correspondence. It seemed like a good idea, even the letter saying, in a paraphrase, “Here’s your check.”
“Make-Believe” has a binder. I feel accomplished. 🙂
I certainly intend to save the galleys of tFB, but I honestly never thought about putting it together with all those emails from Keith and Steve. It’s a good idea, however.
If I do that, one problem I’ll encounter will be the different paper formats. The galleys are printed on US letter paper, while everything I print out myself on my computer will be printed on A4 paper. Talk about a format mismatch!
In the end, I may just put the galleys in a binder and save the other stuff somewhere else (if I decide to actually print it out, that is).
I went through my office a few days ago and found, at the back of one of the desk’s shelves, the first, really long outline for “Make-Believe.” I hadn’t kept a copy of this on the hard drive–I’d hacked it down to a more manageable length before submitting it. It’s different, it would make an interesting story on its own, and it, too, went in the binder.
Michael, how much would it cost to have Steve ship you a ream of letter-sized paper? Or might a local office supply store be able to order it for you? Then you could print out the e-mails on letter instead of A4. Just a thought.