Monday, March 23, 2009

SPRING CLEANING

Saturday, I decided to clean my office. Mostly, that meant going through my closet to make room for the stuff that's been sitting on my floor for months on end.

I found all kinds of wonderful and not-so-wonderful stuff. I found a huge pile of rejection letters for books that are either out of print or contracted to be published. I found a rejection from my current agent for my first published book. (I'm glad to see she liked it.) I found old critiques. I found encouraging letters from a published author who has now fallen on hard times and has been unable to sell more books. (Always a fear once you get published.)

I found lost jewelry. I found many tubes of chapstick and gluestick. I vacuumed. I dusted. I spent about five hours just working on this one room . . . and it's still not where I want it to be. Mostly, it's my desk that's still a mess. (Although I still have yet another pile of papers to go through and file/toss.)

Sunday, I did another kind of clean-up job: my mailing lists. I worked on that for about 7 hours. Checking e-mail addresses that don't work. Looking up missing zip codes, etc.

Of course, now as I look around the rest of the house, I feel pressured to start tossing more magazines, and put away some of the books. There's a lot to be said for living a tidy life. Now if I could just do it on a regular basis.

Have you started your spring cleaning yet?