Aphrodisia Authors :: Blog

COMING JUNE 30.

Call me a snob. Call me behind the times. Whatever label you want to put on me, I’ll never get reality TV. The appeal of peeking into the lives of Real Housewives is beyond me, and much to my mother’s disappointment, I don’t share her fascination with Survivor. Heck, I don’t even watch game shows. I do dig Deadliest Catch, Dirtiest Jobs, and Ice Road Truckers, but I consider them actuality, not reality.

So where am I going with this? I confess. I’m addicted to Clean House although I’m getting bored with the formula of each show. I watch, I believe, because I subscribe to the “If it ain’t nailed down, throw it away,” school of housekeeping so am constantly boggled by images of floors and furniture piled high with ’stuff’. Having too much stuff (and we’re talking about my personal definition of too much) makes me crazy. I can’t see through the clutter, and I certainly can’t lose myself in writing when the stuff starts creeping in. Its much the same feeling I get when those blasted stink ants crawl up the water pipes and swarm over the space under the kitchen sink. KILL!! I mentally scream. Kill!!!!!

Hmm. Maybe that’s what my mindset is when I spirit things out of the house and desposit those things at Goodwill before my dh can stop me. I’m destroying what I have no use for.

And the strange thing is, I feel the same way about my writerly books. I have a small bookshelf that I periodically weed of whatever I haven’t opened for a year or so. I’m talking mostly about research books because I never hold onto the fiction I read for pleasure. That goes to the foster home where my mother lives so the books get passed around to the various residents. And no, I don’t place any erotica in their lined hands because I don’t want to be accussed of corrupting my mother’s generation. That said, the woman who runs the facility has become a fan. What a kick!

Depending on what I’m writing, I’ll have books, magazine articles, Internet printouts, etc for research. At present, I’m working on a story set in Denali Park, Alaska so have a reference guide on the state, another book written by a park ranger who both climbed Denali and assisted in a number of rescues. I have a stack of pages from various Insternet sites on everything from grizzly behavior to various lodges to the ranger staffed medical tent high on the mountain. This stuff is on my desk, on the shelf next to the desk, on the floor, in a desk drawer and I’m perfectly fine with all that. I feel rich, complete, secure because I have everything I believe I need at hand.

But once I’ve finished this proposal, everything will be scooped up and placed in another, out of the way drawer. And when I’m confident that I’ll have no further need for the material, out it goes. I might keep the two books for awhile but that’s all. I’ll feel uncluttered, my space and mind clear and clean and ready to be filled up with what I’ll need for my next project.

Question. Can you relate? Do you need an uncluttered environment? Or does security call for collections, memories, and “I might need this”?
Vonna
www.VonnaHarper.com