I'm sitting here at 11:22 pm trying to think of something inspiring or even mildly interesting. It's just not happening. Instead I'm staring at piles and piles of clean laundry. Monday is wash day at my house, but because of everything else going on, I wash and dry loads of clothing all day, but don't fold anything until evening. By the time I get around to folding there is about an hour and a half of work.
It is quite tempting to put the baskets of clothing aside and try to find the time to fold them later in the week. I could blog something amazing and work on my word count for NaNoWriMo, but the truth is, with all that work staring me in the face, I can't get anything else done. Same thing in my office. If things are out of place it is hard to concentrate and get the writing done. I'm certainly not obsessive about it - we have our fair share of the mess that comes with teenagers and little kids in the house - but when I really want to concentrate, I need to clean up the clutter.
When I do get to the writing, it's a similar situation. As I revise, I need to remove the clutter of the writing. All the extra words and scenes have to go. All the extra ideas have to be put aside until the next project. The more clutter I remove, the easier it is to see whether the story works.
I can't wait until NaNoBloMo and November are over and I can go back to posting a little less often. Right now I need to get folding that laundry before I fall asleep in a laundry basket.
3 comments:
I feel the same way about housework. I just can't seem to concentrate on writing, when I know there is a lot of work to be done.
I do like someone's idea that I saw on (I believe Writing on the Wall blog), about how they would write every other day. One day they'd work on cleaning, the next day they'd work on writing. That way they didn't feel guilty for not cleaning, because they made sure to make time for both.
I try to do a little tidying every day while the little kids are running around and then try to write while they are napping. The biggest problem with this is that I usually have a hard time staying awake in the middle of the afternoon.
But at least it's clean laundry! I have piles and piles of dirty laundry.
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