Ten Stages of Downsizing by Jan Edwards
This month has been all about downsizing, which for 90% of writers that I know is a slow and painful parting of the ways with a small section of their book mountain at very least. The Edwards-Coleborn household is attempting to relocate to somewhere easier to manage and one of the inevitable consequences is that some of our carefully amassed volumes are going to have to go – but which tomes will be destined for the chop? (illo on left not my study - but not unlike!) We’ve been whittling away at the shelves for some weeks now with some (limited) success, and I have noted at least ten phases of book sorting - as follows: · One : the easiest part – mainly non-fiction that is used less and less as we turn to the internet for those morsels of information - items of day-to-day research requiring urgent answers. Things such as the composition of powder applicators in a 1930s handbag compact; the exact week that ...