Stack Attack

Around about Monday midnight, two cats came hurtling into my study, the one chasing the other, and sprang high onto my big worktable, but not high enough.

Bang! Cat number one (the chased) kicked back against a particularly precipitous pile of "really important stuff"and sent it spilling onto the floor. Followup bang!  Cat number two (the chaser) got into a twist trying to avoid the avalanche and sent what little remained also onto the newly-formed island of paper below. Ah, the joys of sharing a house with felines.

There was no way I was going to tackle tidying it up then. It'll have to wait until Wednesday, I thought with a weary groan, and spent the next day and a half skirting the messy mound. I was mightily tempted today to not do it, but being a grown-up, I did, both to clear the room and my head - and I must say my worktable looks a lot less cluttered now. I suppose I almost owe the cats a thank you. Then I wrote for 3 hours. Afterwards, once I'd had a nap, I set aside thirty minutes to attack a few "garden stacks" aka weeds, so the patio also has a more streamlined look, and gave myself a stern lecture about not letting things that tend to pile up get out of control. Weed a bit each week. Tick off an arduous (boring) everyday task or two each day. Clip and file articles, and write notes as I go. Don't procrastinate. Don't stack.

98% of what was in that toppled stack ended up in the recycling bin. Throwing stuff out is always the quickest way to get such jobs done. Amongst all the old magazines and forgotten printouts, however, I found a folder full of critiques from the spec-fic novel writing course I did a few years ago with Paul Collins. I reread the submissions and the kind comments, and wondered why I haven't done more with this novel, why I'd almost forgotten about this great opus that I was once so fired up about. I've written most of it, and it's been sitting on my hard drive for long enough. Of course, I haven't really been up for a longer project over the past couple of years of medical crap, but perhaps it's time to see if I can scrounge enough energy and head space to finish it.

No point putting it off any longer. Life will be much neater with it done.

Whether it makes it out into the world, of course, is an entirely different matter altogether.