When a Writer Dies: Making Difficult Decisions About the Work Left Behind | Jane Friedman

In The Death of a Writer, Allison K Williams reported what she did as a friend's literary executor.

Read everything, she advised. Get help deciding what needs to be published. So I read everything. My wife's private journals, texts, social media, photo captions, drafts, published work, all of it. Not to snoop, as Williams noted, but to separate the beauty from the garbage.

Took a year. Could have taken longer.