Save Everything – Found Texts and Other Things to Stash in an Old Box

by Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo

box I have been carting around a medium-sized cardboard box of notes, cards and letters for twenty years. From apartment to apartment where I kept it in the backs of closets or under the bed, from Boston to Boulder and back, from house to house. It now resides in a built-in cabinet in what is supposed to be our dining room but is instead our “library room.” It’s where we keep the shelves of our books and all my writing folders, binders, notes. (I am making this sound really organized, but don’t be fooled.) There’s even a good old-fashioned dictionary in there and the paperback thesaurus I have owned since sixth grade.

But, back to the cardboard box.

It contains almost every note I received from best friends, second-tier friends and my sister throughout high school. It is an enchanted entry to a forgotten self. A treasure box of abandoned vocabulary: lunch shift, detention, yellow slips, study hall, language lab, term paper, final exam. Oh, and pop quiz! My sister’s every note has two things consistently included: her ever-present raging hunger (which she refers to as “the cats,” as in “the cats are acting up”) and torment over some boy. Recently, in an effort to unearth some good material for the novel I am working on, I undertook the task of reading most of the contents of the box. It took me several nights, but there is some brilliant stuff in there. Never underestimate the intelligence, insight and steadfast passion of a teenager. We would do well to reclaim it in our adult lives. Using a phrase here and a sentence there from these letters lends an authenticity of voice to my characters. They capture the frenetic quality of a teenager. I don’t remember how to talk like that. I recall a lot of what it felt like, but seeing it in writing dives deeper into the long-forgotten details of experience.

This is why I say—save everything.

Get yourself a pretty box, a plain one, an unused drawer, something. Any cards, letters, little ideas that strike you even if you don’t know if or how you will ever put them to use—stash them away. Also, steal stuff whenever you can. Recognize the moment and if it’s good, save it.

I have a folder on the desktop of my MacBook called “The Dump.” In there goes any sentence, blurb, idea, character, observation, overheard bit of dialogue, bits that get pulled out of a piece or for which I don’t have a specific place right now. Any given bit might stay in The Dump forever. Or, it may become a vital or pivotal gem for something someday. Who knows?

That’s why I save everything.

What do you save and where? Have you ever tossed something away and then wished you hadn’t?

Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo is a writer, reader, yogini (when she can squeeze it in), mom, part-time Office Manager, a homemaker and the Coordinator and Writer for The Writer’s Life blog. She loves to cook and take long walks with her kids and is a woman who wants to meaningfully exchange and intersect with other women writers. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Currently she works at a web development company (because part-time Office Manager buys more groceries than Struggling Writer). She is at work on a novel and a short story collection. Melissa lives in North Central Massachusetts with her family.