I had a letter the other day. It said that a certain National institution didn’t have a copy of one of my books, and, whereas they were charged with having copies of every professional item written by a kiwi, they felt the lack here. I’ve sent them a copy to fill their gap – but after the phone discussion it also occured to me that in order to know what I’ve had appear, they were probably checking my website. And the problem with that is that for years I kept a credit list of books and stories, but not of articles or poems published although for most of those I have an author copy.
But if the institution was gradually collecting everything I wrote professionally – not only are they going to need more shelving (and probably an extra grant for purchases) – they will come to a screeching halt somewhere in 2009 when I stopped updating the story list – while articles and poems were never done at all. So very shortly the monumental task of doing that will begin. Sorting six shelves worth of ‘author copies’ into the categories of Books, Stories, Articles (plus opinion pieces), and Poems, and then by year. And once that is accomplished, adding that lot to my own data base and then to the website.
I’m grateful that books have stayed up to date as have awards, and that I’m only about 3 years out on stories, but as, over the 22 years I’ve been a pro-writer there’s been a few poems, and quite a number of articles/opinion pieces, there’s one thing I do know. It’s that by the time I get the updating done, I’m really going to regret having let this slide in the first place!
