Domesticity: Cleaning Out the Study

Clean the cobwebs from your brown study. Stop your navel-gazing. Wipe clean the desk where your writing takes place. Dust and fingerprints—evidence of the past—are all over you. You need a clean slate if you are to incorporate new ideas.

 

What can I throw out?

 

Well, you can start with old ideas. They may not be very heavy, but some of the really old ones take up a lot of room. So, old ideas out the window.

 

Wait a minute. I thought I already did this. I already threw out almost everything I absorbed in those early years.

 

You threw out some of it, yes.

 

Lordy, lordy. I have to drag out the files and weed them again?

 

That's the name of the game.

 

Hold your horses! I'm going back to the beginning. The topic was "clean out the study" and we've gone from that to some sort of existential housecleaning. I'm going to start cleaning in the study.

 

It's your funeral. Here's this heaven-sent opportunity to let a breath of fresh air into all the crannies of your mind, and you're already balking.

 

Well, that's the problem right there. I never did understand the balk rule. Sometimes I see the pitcher hesitate and I think, "Surely that's a balk!" but no one makes a peep. Another time the plate ump will just shout out "Balk!" and I won't have seen anything amiss. So I obviously don't understand balking.

 

You certainly do understand procrastination, though, don't you?

 

Yep.

 

Copyright 2007 Ann Tudor
www.anntudor.ca