All week long I have been working on cleaning my office. It’s a long process because even after two years in this house, not everything has a home. And as beautiful as my office is, I haven’t been writing in it. I’ve been writing on the couch in the library which is fine for blog posts and occasional emails but not so great for making progress on the novel.

So I’ve been cleaning and sorting and throwing things away which means bringing some giant stacks of paperwork, sitting on the couch, and sifting through it all.

When I found notes about an airplane accident I got all excited and for the next hour, all I could think about was working on Flyboy’s story. Then I found a stack of pages from the dayjob. I was ready to throw them away but when I turned them over there were all sorts of notes about Plant Kid on the back. Flyboy disappeared and I was lost in the world of plants and worms and evil neighbors.

I continued sorting business cards into a pile of contacts and Bed, Bath and Beyond coupons into a shopping stack. When I found a recipt I tried to read the faded ink to decipher if it was needed for taxes. It wasn’t, but on the back were a few words, the beginnings of a poem that I wrote when sitting in a boring meeting. Each scrap of paper had to be instpected front and back in case precious prose was waiting for me to find it.

I’m amazed I was able to keep cleaning at all.