On days when it is a winter wonderland, and Manhattan is completely cut off by snow at the end of my street – I hunker down. My apartment isn’t so cold as it was so it’s not as FREAKY hanging out here.<\/p>\n
I spent the morning cleaning, throwing shit out – On one of my trips down to the recycle area in the cellar, ran into my next door neighbor who asked me randomly if I wanted a small filing cabinet.<\/p>\n
Seeing as all of my writing is now sitting in carefully labeled piles and file-folders in a damn box under my dresser, I jumped at his offer.<\/p>\n
I have to get down to some real work this winter\/spring – There’s some writing shit to be done. There is no deadline, except the one in my head – but there is also someone waiting for my jottings. And having my 5 drafts of one story sitting in a cardboard box is not good karma. It is not organized. It also is not a good signal, to have one of the most important parts of my life, my writing, tucked away in a box, as though it is summer clothes. No. Time to re-shuffle the room, and bring the work up to the forefront.<\/p>\n
And – lo and behold – here comes a free filing cabinet.<\/p>\n
I have now filled it up – all different stories in different labeled hanging folders – all correspondence with magazines, editors, agents in one folder, so I can keep track of WHAT THE HELL I AM DOING …<\/p>\n
Can I tell you the peace of mind it brings?<\/p>\n
I know I’m a simple creature. A filing cabinet fills me with peace.<\/p>\n
But so be it. Tis the God’s honest truth.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the snow keeps coming down.<\/p>\n
Now, though, as I look about my room – with all my writing organized and placed in an easy-access kind of way – there’s a space in my brain cleared. And Work can now fill up that space. Before, that space was filled with free-floating anxiety along the lines of, “Okay, now WHICH draft of this story is the latest one? And WHERE did I send out this one? Which magazine is holding onto this piece?” That’s bullshit. It’s no way to write, or to try to succeed.<\/p>\n
I’ve got some room now.<\/p>\n
I can get going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On days when it is a winter wonderland, and Manhattan is completely cut off by snow at the end of my street – I hunker down. My apartment isn’t so cold as it was so it’s not as FREAKY hanging … Continue reading