Spring Clean Those Files

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By Sayurta

Spring is just around the corner, although you might not think it to look at the weather, and it's a traditional time of cleaning around the home. I've read a lot of writing blogs over the years, and many of them advocate clearing your writing desk as part of your spring cleaning routine - it has the benefit of a) making projects, research and other bits and bobs easier to find and b) helps minimise distractions. I must admit, I don't have a set space for writing, since I write at work on my lunch break, in various places around Castle Sedgwick, and even sitting on the train. Without a set space, I have nothing to spring clean...or do I?

There is absolutely nothing stopping any writer from applying the idea of spring cleaning to their work instead of their work space. I'm at that stage where the coming spring is making me champ at the bit to start working on new projects, but I can't help feeling like that will be counter productive. All I'll end up with is yet more works in progress and no actual finished work. So my plan for spring cleaning is deceptively simple - finish my outstanding work.

By Jonathan Joseph Bondhus

I've got a raft of short stories that I have yet to finish, not to mention a novella that needs a final chapter, and a finished novella that needs another round of edits before it goes to my editor. It's always a good idea to let work marinade between writing a story and beginning edits - I edit much faster than I write, and as I'd love to get some new stories out for submission, I have no option but to actually write them in order to get onto editing them. Writers are always counselled to keep producing content but if I don't finish it, how can I get that content out there?

You might be wondering how finishing my outstanding work can be considered as spring cleaning, and it's quite simple - I like to keep all of my works in progress in one folder, while I have separate folders for finished projects. If my WiP folder is full of half finished files, then after a while I forget what most of the files are even for. If I go back to those stories or novels, there's a good chance I might forget how I was planning to end them. If that happens, that's essentially a wasted idea. And I hate waste.

So by the end of my spring cleaning period, I'm hoping to have a lot of WiP files moved to individual project folders, and a good defragment should have my laptop running a lot faster than usual - which should get me writing more!

Images from Wikimedia Commons.