Creative Minds are Rarely Tidy

/ Garrulous Gwendoline

The first draft of my currently title-less manuscript is 90% done, and I am taking a week off writing while I wait to hear initial feedback as to how it is shaping up. No doubt there are many places where I will need to “kill my darlings” – I can already think of plenty!

I thought it time to sort through my research papers and whittle down to only what I used. And time too, to collate all the tasks that have fallen by the wayside. I needed to remind myself what needs attention.

After two days of drudge, mind-numbing boredom relieved only with breakouts of playing bridge on the computer, I have come up with this. A brief moment in time . . .

Love is . . . having an etching of your husband’s favourite pub on your study wall

It’s one thing to have your to-do projects neatly sorted . . . actually completing them is another matter . . .

Despite being relegated to the floor, the red box contains the current precious manuscript. After throwing out, or filing, hundreds of pieces of paper from the stackable filing trays, I discovered that what remains for the research box only half-fills it. Note to self – do something about that research obsession!

Now to put a line through every item on the “To-Do” list . . .

36 thoughts on “Creative Minds are Rarely Tidy”

  1. My Mums a logistics transport planner, I know no one more organised at work and your labels and files look really organised to me, but when we’re home she likes to live less planned but she’s on a mission at the moment to declutter. I simply sit back and allow her to boss me into organising my music, my spreadsheets, my accounts she facetimes to make sure I do it and don’t just leave things in piles or carrier bags lol 😂.

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    • Snap! I used to work in shipping and logistics and my last “real” job was as National Customer Service Manager for the shipping line NYK. Your mum probably knows them. I had to be highly organised in the workforce, ships and planes do not hang around for the cargo to turn up. Since retirement it’s almost as if I am in rebellion. I never plan what I am going to write, for example. The study keeps getting chaotic to the point I can’t move. So taking that two days to sort it out really paid off. I just worked through each task and over a week or more they are all finished! Yaay! Good on you for listening to your mother – it’s so easy for these things to get away to where it is monumental to sort them out. And I imagine you have to be extremely careful to be paying royalties wherever they are still in play for the music you use, and then there is the sales from your own pieces, expenses to be deducted, and tax to be paid. Even if you aren’t selling enough yet to pay tax, that day will come! So learn good habits now 🙂

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  2. That pub of your husbands looks damned well like the Australian in the Rocks where I worked back in the 70’s. Publicans name was Johnny Wacher, called Wakker for short; a dentist by profession who’d bugger off to fix peoples teeth at his surgery in Bondi and leave me to run the pub and the book, that’s the SP book 👿 It was great fun. He was known to extract a tooth that was playing up in the pub; had some good times working for Wakker.

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    • Yes it certainly is the Australian. Our friend has been drinking there for decades, maybe even forty, at least thirty. Perhaps he was originally attracted by the Scharers beer. He has a regular spot on the corner, outside in summer, inside on cooler days. Every Friday (at least) he sits there and waits for the world to come to him. Which it does. Bill goes up every month or so. So perhaps you can pop down there one day and chew the fat with our friend. The table is reserved under ‘Brian” (curious huh?) but we also know him as Jesso or Yangzte. An erudite man such as yourself. Worked on the wharves with my husband as a tally clerk. Took redundancy under the Hawke agreement in the early 90s. There was a scheme – supposed to get rid of 3000 old timers, who supposedly would not accept modern practices, and bring on 1000 bright new things. All the companies did was hire the old timers back as casuals, and have a token few new guys they called G-wees. Guaranteed wage earners. In other words, they’d throw them a few hours for a guaranteed minimum wage. Don’t get me started on industrial relations! Anyway! back to Brian, he also used to play rugby in the Golden Oldies. I sense you two would get on well – why don’t you wander down there one day and introduce yourself? Tell him I sent you 🙂

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  4. Gosh, wonder if it’s even possible to be organized during long trips abroad… I’ve more or less given it up. Just being 90% finished with your SECOND MANUSCRIPT is impressive! Keep telling myself when I get to a quieter place (ha) will start the FIRST manuscript. ;o(

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    • I’m sure you are much more organized than you give yourself credit for, or you wouldn’t be able to move on to each new destination without calling in the removalists. There are many, many statistics on writing full length work, eg out of every 1,000 people that set out to write a book, only 30 actually finish. Only 20% of people who write a book actually publish it, so that leaves 6 people from the original pool. So yes, I can pat myself on the back to the first milestone. Now to finish it. Whether it gets published in an entirely different hurdle.

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  6. Ah Gwen you are setting very high standards. I would love to be that organised. You have inspired me. When I get all my stuff out of storage I really, really am going to have a huge clear out. (I so should have done that BEFORE I moved 😡 )

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    • I was very surprised just how many bits of paper I had lying around, and of course I had re-printed many not realising where I had put them. So I just kept asking myself, “will I remember where I put this if I keep it?”. I do have one other large box that I keep lots of family history stuff in, and a lot went there (in order!) But it was a dreary, dreary two days.

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