Clutter and writing

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving and you didn’t gain more than a pound or two.

I’m starting work on book #27 at the moment. (There’s not a lot I can say for the moment, as it’s for something not yet announced.) I’m going to be discovering a lot about the self-publishing process and many other things as the months wear merrily on, but I wanted to say a few things about clutter.

Clutter is anything that gets in the way. Clutter is not stuff that’s by definition “bad,” but it is definitely misplaced. Right now, my office is more cluttered than I’m comfortable with, but having racked up my left knee very badly a week ago Thursday, it’s very hard to reach down and pick stuff off the floor or lift a box or much of anything. Clutter has accumulated as a result, much of it in the form of junk mail to be sifted and thrown into the shredding box.

Writing with too much clutter–of any kind–is hard for me and it’s probably hard for you. Clutter sneaks into your field of vision. You see it constantly in the corners of your eyes and it’s distracting. Very, very annoying stuff!

If you’ve got clutter in your office or your life, you need to get rid of it. The best book I’ve ever run into for decluttering is Clutter’s Last Stand by Don Aslett. Don’s a fascinating guy who writes fun, approachable books about cleaning, decluttering, and organizing. His central theme is that if you can’t do the thing you want to do because it’s blocked by clutter, then clutter is robbing you of time, which is your life. Don’s written a number of books since Clutter’s Last Stand on decluttering, but the first on the subject is probably the best.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get a few more things off my desk and then get back to work on this section on concepts.

3 Responses to “Clutter and writing”

  1. I have had this book referred to me on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, my clutter is mostly stacks of research materials… I’ve got a dozen books to read before I will feel comfortable adding that one to tower of books atop my counter.

Leave a Reply to Laurel Van Driest

Click here to cancel reply.

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>