Spring Cleaning

So, it is Monday, and it is looking all Spring-like outside, and it rained yesterday and freshened everything up, so guess what I am doing today? Well, it looks something likes this:

Sadly, some places I'm working on, like my window sill, look more like this:

Um, gross! *cough, hacking cough* Now I have to pull out the vacuum since all that gunk is now floating through the air.

I don't want to talk to you about cleaning your house, though. Today I wanted to give you my thoughts on cleaning your writing files. As a writer surely you have a bunch of files that are really important to you, such as story plot ideas, lists of characters, lists of things you have researched, manuscripts in various stages, cover ideas, and the list goes on. Whether these files are paper or electronic, you have to think about how you are treating these oh so precious babies of ours. In the past I have talked about making sure you have backed up your electronic files, so today I want to give you my two cents on your actual, physical writing-related files.

In my room I have a small shelf that is part of my desk, and it is devoted to holding my writing materials. A notebook or two, various pieces of paper that I used in the night of feverishly write down an idea I had, printed out copies of past books that are in various stages of editing, books about writing, my funny writing glasses with no lenses. . . whatever you have sitting around, pay attention to how you are protecting it. I currently am not doing a fabulous job. Sure, they are all there together in a specific place, but I really need to get back to realizing just how important these scraps of paper are to me! A while back I took all my random scraps and organized them. Now it is apparently time to do it again. So, not only am I doing spring cleaning in the most-used sense of the word, but I am also doing it with my writing files.

Maybe this is a tip, maybe it is just a wake up call, or maybe you are already on top of this with some amazing system! Either way, I hope this helped you out somewhat today. Also a quick update since I forgot to post on Friday: I am starting my editing of Ontario today, and I also plan to begin working on  Lorn again some time this afternoon. YEAH! I am way excited for both of these things! So, here's to the lot of us getting our files organized and back into the writing world!

- Heidi Nicole Bird