Useful Scrap

I may have mentioned this before, but it is still true. When you start a new project, plan on how you are going to throw things away. As I write I generate stuff that is too good to throw away, but not right for where it is. I call this my “scrap”. I’ve now got a fairly structured storage for it, so that I can search for bits I wrote for chapter 2 that didn’t go anywhere, but might be perfect for chapter 4. Rule one is Never Throw Anything Away. Use GitHub to make sure that you don’t lose anything by mistake and find somewhere to put stuff that you’ve written but don’t know what to do with.

I see the first part of writing as a bit like mining. You come up with all this raw material that you then need to refine into something useful. A scrapheap to me is part of that process. So, if you start making something, build in a way of dealing with your scrap.