In the Event of My Death: Burn Everything… or Steamroll It!

Over the Christmas holidays, I decided to declutter my basement office. The task had been on my To-Do List for far too long. I procrastinated because it was a BIG job, which ultimately took me seven days to complete. Sad, but true.

While sifting through the stacks of papers, books, and file folders, I found some personal notes full of secret information. Information that I don’t need or want anyone else to know about. What if someone else had seen them? What would they think? What would they say?

I thought about a friend who had recently passed away, and I wondered if her family was searching through all her private things with a fine tooth comb. What did they find? Were they surprised? Upset? Confused? All the questions had me thinking of my own death. It could happen at any time. I just don’t know when.

My head swiveled around the messy office, observing the piles of notes on novels, short stories, sketches, and random journals and spiral notebooks. Most loose notes were on small scraps of recycled paper because I hated to waste paper. There were several stacks of books on the floor waiting to be sorted and placed into my library system (per genre first, then alphabetically by author’s last name, of course). I’m sure everything in the room seemed important at one time, but now, I had a different mindset.

I read everything my fingers touched. My mind travelled down several rabbit holes and memory lanes. In the end, I shredded a few things into tiny bits of confetti. The rest I took outside to our steel barrel to burn, so there would be nothing left but ash. I didn’t want some Crime Scene Investigator playing puzzle solver and taping my documents back together. Sounds hilarious, but I was taking no chances.

In the summer, I talked with my husband about all my “writerly” things stuffed and stacked in my office. He said that I should name a Literary Executor in my will to take care of publishing all my unfinished work after I die. I thought about it, and I said, “Burn everything. Don’t read it; just burn it.” I wasn’t joking.

He said, “No way. There are probably a few bestsellers down there, and I can make a fortune on them. I’ll sell them to the highest bidder.” He laughed. “Besides, the kids won’t let me burn them. They will want to read every word you ever wrote just to hear your voice again. And so will I.”

The bottom line, it seemed there would be no fire after my death.

“A “literary executor is a person entrusted with the management of the papers and unpublished works of a deceased author. In other words, a literary executor specifically handles all your literary property, including overseeing your copyrights, contracts with publishers, outstanding royalties, etc.” 

~ Definition by Merriam-Webster.com.

Most people will probably say they don’t care what happens to their writing once they are gone. I’m not one of them. I do not want my unfinished work sent out anywhere. I would prefer no one tries to finish it, because they don’t think like I do. Plus, I would not want my family spending hundreds of hours going through my stuff, wondering what to do with it. 

I read that renowned fantasy author Terry Pratchett left directions, that as soon as he died, he wanted his uncompleted books on his hard drive destroyed by a heavy steamroller. In 2015, after Pratchett died, a vintage steamroller named Lord Jericho crushed the hard drive at the Great Dorset Steam Fair. I love this story, so I asked my husband to do the same with my laptops. He chuckled and said that he would. However, hubby also said he would read everything on them first before he destroyed them. I guess that is a compromise.

What about you? Do you need a Literary Executor to take care of your unpublished works or royalties? Have you given instructions to your loved ones explaining what you would like to have done with all your unpublished stories? And more importantly, do you worry about the weird and strange notes you might have left behind in your desk drawers or in the filing cabinets, that someone may find later after you are gone and misconstrue what the notes actually mean?

I hope everyone remembers that I write dark fiction. Ha! (insert my nervous laughter here)

Further Updates: 

1.) I scribbled the name of a local company that rents steamrollers on the outside of the envelope for our Last Will and Testament. My husband has promised me he will make it a family event to steamroll all my laptops until they are unreadable (including my external hard drives), provided I die before him.

2.) As I made my way through the process of “sifting” and “burning” the incriminating papers and notes from my office, I thought about all the questions someone might have. I thought about the kinds of things I was burning. This took my mind toward a fictional story I could write about a person with a past she wanted no one to know about. I would make it worse than my actual situation (tenfold). As I jotted down a few bullet points, I smiled. This is how a novel starts… with one little match (or idea) that ignites into an inferno (a thriller novel).