Writer Unboxed

How did it get to this?

I’m a neat-freak, I’ll come clean about it (hee). But nine months of working on my current wip has left my writer’s space devastated. Eight million Post Its flutter on the cage around my computer screen, dust motes wheel across the back end of my tiny desk where the wall meets a tower of research books. And the coffee rings, my god.

I feel . . . unsettled about the mess. I’m also loath to clean it. Not because I’m lazy, but because the clutter itself symbolizes the creative explosion that happened in that very space. It’s the scabrous afterbirth of my mind, the detrious of fired synapses and god-speak and communion with my higher self in the form of writing and —

Oh hell. It’s just a bloody mess.

Some people work in a perpetual mishmash of paperclip airplanes and crusty tea mugs. They need the comfort of their clutter to prop up the fragile muse who flits fiendishly away just when inspiration seems to be striking. That ain’t me. Then what’s my problem?

Mrs. Clean offers tips on how to clean up a workspace. It seems like a lot of work right now.

I’ll get it together, eventually. I have a theory that until I can finally get the edits done and mail this sucker out, I’ll be freed from my inability to disturb my cruddy workspace and clean the toast crumbs out of my damn keyboard.

Until then I’ll keep the Raid handy.

Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She has written two novels under the pseudonym Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter--both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President's teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins.

Kathleen Bolton

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