It was in the middle 1980s that I began to publish scientific papers and publish them in professional journals. And this activity naturally spread to the related academic outputs; such as conference abstracts, commentaries, book chapters, book reviews, letters, and discussion pieces.
A couple of years later this spilled-out from the specialist journals into more mainstream news-stand magazines (New Scientist, Times Higher Education Supplement, The Times newspaper and some others).
But when you write as much as I did, and when that writing is for-publication; you soon spread into a multitude of that vast, submerged-iceberg of "little magazines" - with readerships measured in hundreds, rather than tens of thousands - of which most people are utterly unaware.
Later a published some actual books; of which I wrote or co-authored seven - not counting some online pseudo-books published only in the form of blogs.
It fairly soon became apparent that this kind of writing was something I could do, and increasingly enjoyed doing.
Writing was a kind of thinking: it seemed to help me understand and discover.
And I did this manic publishing for about thirty years - albeit dwindling considerably from 2010 - and finishing publishing altogether in 2017.
(Albeit my hypergraphia affliction is not cured, as readers of this blog are all too aware.)
I have copies of many, many hundreds of items - many of which I cannot remember thinking, writing or publishing.
This should not really be surprising; because someone who publishes some-thing (no matter how small or trivial) even at a modest rate of once a fortnight; would produce 26 items per year, 260 in a decade, and 780 in thirty years.
And I was publishing somewhat more than once a fortnight.
But even that productivity makes a big, heavy heap of papers; especially when (as usual) I had made several copies of each item (so I could distribute them if asked for). (And even when not asked.)
Thus I have been engaged in the melancholy task of throwing-out the excess copies; although I still cannot quite persuade myself to apply even minimal quality control about what is saved: I cannot, yet, rid myself of even the most trivial, most obscure, most ephemeral items - I'm still hoarding them sentimentally.
But in a few more years (if I am spared) I shall perhaps have rid myself of the delusional conceit that my every micro-emanation is worthy of preservation; and shall, no doubt, have developed the necessary ruthlessness to cull the drivel...
At least; that's what I tell myself.
NOTE ADDED. I should emphasize that I made very nearly zero money from 30 years of writing. The best money was from New Scientist (especially when I once wrote a front cover feature, which paid about the same a month of my salary as a newly-appointed lecturer); and The Times, which paid 300 pounds apiece in the mid 1990s. But, as a freelance contributor all these decently-paid outlets dried-up and completely disappeared from the mid-1990s, due to internal changes in the way that magazines and journals operated.
