Decluttering

I didn't specifically write it down as a resolution, but one of my ongoing personal goals is to remove excess clutter from my life. This involves removing from the house items I no longer use, finishing (or scrapping) unfinished projects, and otherwise slimming down my surroundings.

This has proved surprisingly difficult to do.

The biggest problem, of course, is that my brain doesn't natively break large projects down into smaller, more manageable chunks. When I see a cluttered home as THIS BIG HUGE PROJECT THAT MUST ALL BE DONE NOW, I quit before I've even gotten started. Yeah, I know, ridiculously stupid mental roadblock, but it's a roadblock that's been both persistent and effectively crippling in my life. I work at detouring around it, at telling myself, "OK, self, you are not touching the mess in the pantry or the bedroom or anything else today; all you're going to do is clear the stuff out of the bay window. That's it." If I can just remember to break it down into smaller projects, I can actually get stuff done.

Among my UFOs (unfinished objects): lots of writing. I started writing Unseen nearly three years ago, and still haven't finished it. Worse, I'm near the end of the story, which is where I almost always peter out because endings are complex and difficult and as much as I keep repeating the mantra "it's just a draft, it's just a draft," I'm terrified of screwing it up. Meh.

But good writing takes time. (Even mediocre writing like mine takes time.) And as much as I'd like to slam out thousand-page books -- and get paid -- like Stephen King, I'm just not capable of working at that speed or volume.  So I have a few articles simmering on the back burner, and every now and then I pull one up and write a few more words or tweak a description or decide on another plot point. And then I re-read and suppress the urge to delete the whole thing because it isn't good enough. Here's the thing: it's never going to be good enough for me. I'm learning to write and post anyway, in the hope that the process will eventually lead to improvements in my writing, plotting and voice. Because so far, I haven't seen evidence of much improvement through the process of not-writing and waiting around for the Fairy Godmother of Writing Muses to come and tap me on the head.