A Cure For Piles?

Anyone know a cure for piles? Most writers seem to suffer from them. It's an occupational hazard.

No, it's not the sitting all day - I mean the piles that grow because of your [okay, my] obsessive tendency to hoard material - cuttings, photographs, notes scribbled in libraries, notebooks of all shapes and sizes, magazines, stacks of books - all vital research.

These autumn leaves set me thinking about my piles. Stack the leaves in a bin liner for a year or so, and they will rot beautifully. This nourishing leaf mould, when spread on the soil, produces growth spurts all over the garden.

When I'm working on a novel, it's not the papers that rot down [if only] but the composting goes on somewhere in the unconscious. For me, having the back up of the original research piled around me seems necessary until the project is complete. That's when I reach for a bin liner.


I've just finished a book, and, yes, this is my tidy desk. You should see the bin liners I'm taking to the recycling dump. Will Self has legendary piles and 'leaves' of post-its [presumably nuggets gleaned from the piles] all around his workroom.  Take a look for yourself at these 70 + photographs showing a 360 degrees view of his writing room.