The green writer's dilemma: a scrap paper crisis
I have a constitutional inability to use paper. Tricky in a writer, you might think. As a physics student in the nineties my back of the envelope calculations were genuinely done on the back of an envelope. I hoarded scrap paper and my flatmates used to add their surplus to the cardboard box under my desk, which went with me when I left. I have three writing notebooks that are actually other people's discarded desk diaries, bought in a fit of enthusiasm and never used. Or in my mum's case for the 2006 one, put down somewhere safe and lost until 2008.
Brought up in the eighties by my Nana with her 1940s make do and mend ethos, scared into good habits by Friends of the Earth, I have taken reduce and reuse to heart. Even I, however, print things out sometimes. I cannot, no matter how many times I try, successfully edit a novel on the screen. Something about being able to flick back and forth, put pages side by side, or scrawl in coloured pencil helps me enormously. Short stories, even a novella, I've happily managed on my laptop. Novels, no chance. But I'm running out.
I have three novels that I'm working on to a greater or lesser degree right now. There's the semi-rural fantasy that got me on the Penguin WriteNow day in 2017, which I've been sending to agents left, right and centre and now want to go back and rework a bit because I'm not sure there's enough nature in it. There's the sci-fi noir that I got useful feedback from a small press from around Christmas time, that I want to tweak to address their concerns so I can send it elsewhere with confidence. And there's the crime novel I got my first ever full manuscript request for last year, which needs tightening up for the second full manuscript request which I got from another small press, who meanwhile gave me helpful feedback on the few chapters they've already read. That's a lot of pages to print out and go through with a red pen.
OneMonkey has often been heard to say I have more than enough scrap paper. Usually when I'm about to squirrel away flyers and handouts while we're out, or the single-sided descriptive insert from a box of Christmas crackers at a family gathering. In fact when he cleared out his box of MSc notes recently I agreed to be ruthless and not keep every last printout and single-sided form. I ended up with two full drawers and a one-inch thick stack of A4 on the top of the cabinet, thinking it would last for ages. It's almost all gone.
It occurred to me this morning as I printed out another section of the crime novel (forty pages of single-sided A4 from the drawer) that I'm not replenishing this supply. Given that neither of us has been a student for at least a dozen years we're certainly not adding printouts of slides, homework questions, instructions for formatting essays. I suspect if we were students these days they'd point us at an online resource anyway. After a certain number of years I used to put bills, bank statements, mortgage letters and the like into the scrap paper box but they're mostly electronic now, and the few that are paper are printed on both sides. In a way, that's a good thing, but it doesn't help me with my printing. Among the sheets from this morning's session I also had particulars from estate agents from before the days of rightmove, job details from when you sent for an application pack instead of filling in an online form, and letters from the Institute of Physics which have undoubtedly migrated to email.
Before long, I'll be forced to print out on brand new (recycled) paper, and the only additions to my scrap paper drawer will be the half-sheets from when a chapter ends partway down a page. And the inevitable double-sided printing disasters where I print the second page over the first. It's going to come as something of a shock after all these years, the demise of my scrap paper printing supply. I might have to delve under the bed to check I haven't got a forgotten folder of A-level notes I can liberate some homework sheets from.
If you'd like to help me brace for the shock you can always buy me a cuppa…
