Its that time of year again. Spring has sprung and winter seems like a distant memory. The birds are finally leaving their nests, the bee's are back and the blossom is just starting to bloom. The sun is out and the windows are open. That means its time for a clear out.
Yes its time to clean everything, to evaluate what we have and decide what we want to get rid of, whether it be to a charity shop, to sell, or simply toss in the bin.
For me that also means it is time to turn rooms around, to go through the desk and the books... did I forget to mention that on my last count I had just over 300 books, oh yes I have 2 bookcases full of both fiction and non-fiction reference books and encyclopedias, plus ebooks in my email.
Usually I'll re-assign groupings to my books these are usually wicca/spiritualism, mythology/archaeology, writing/dictionaries, encyclopedias, ancient egypt, freemasonary and fiction.
This is also the time that I re-discover in old note books poems, articles and either story ideas or notes.
Anything to do with writing does not get thrown out, it gets carefully evaluated and either put back in the desk cupboard or on top to be used and worked.
Old photography magazines have been torn apart as I removed any images I liked or found interesting and inspiring. I'll put together a sort of scrap book of inspiration oneday.
Pens get checked...yes pens I do still also write by hand and I have a habit of collecting ones which write well. I'm sure many of you are the same.
Even the laptop gets a clear out too - saving many items to disc or stick and deleting those that are nothing important. And then finally the disc cleanup and defrag.
I'm almost done. Yesterday I cleared the desk and done some bits, re-discovered an article, a story idea and some notes. The laptop was sorted a few days ago. Today I cleaned, found some poetry, looked in some notebooks which made me smile and found a possible story idea and yes tore out the photo's I liked.
Next weekend its the bookcases turn to get raided, cleaned and put back correctly.
Then its back to full working mode.
They do say a clean and tidy room means a clean and tidy mind. I know this to be true, spring is always when I back in the flow of things and get large amounts of work done, but is it the same for you?
I do know what you mean! For me, that sense of clean out does not just happen around Spring, but twice or three times a year. When I go through my room and sort out all the papers, documents, files scattered about and on my computer. Like you, NOTHING to do with writing gets thrown out. It is reorganized and then usually recycled into something new if it's an idea or concept that had been abandoned at some point. I can tell you, certain bits of "Mage" and other stories found their way into "Wounds".
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