In preparation for our big home project (as well as an effort to appease our HOA), we’ve started to throw out as much old stuff as possible without, you know, trying to replace them. It’s amazing the amount of crap a couple can gather over seven years. When my husband and I got married, we moved into a 500 sq. ft suite and we had more space for our stuff than our couch. If you would even call it a couch. Our friend prefers to call it “that thing that made him smell like a crazy cat lady on the train”, on account of our cat at the time occasionally using it as a litterbox. He still hasn’t forgiven us for the looks he got that night. (Never, in his life, has he been the worst-smelling person in public transportation).
Unfortunately, as you can see, we have a lot of hobbies. We picked up even more hobbies when we finally moved into a house three years later. And of course, we kept replacing our IKEA furniture because–believe me–these things do not hold up well when moving. We’ve had one BILLY bookcase fall apart on us, and it’s even worse when you have kids.
While we don’t plan to drop the hobbies any time soon, we think we’ve reached our limit, particularly as I’ve stubbed my toe one-too-many-times while trying to navigate my way around our hopelessly chaotic kitchen (“Is that a child’s toy or the steel wool I just dro–nooo, it’s a dead mouse.”). Our vague hope is that we can simplify our life and maybe not have stuff fall on us while we’re trying to sleep. Maybe. Throwing stuff away seems like a good start. That, and banning me from ever walking into an IKEA again. That place sucked up all our wedding money like it was nobody’s business…
Come to think of it, decluttering is a pretty good idea, too, when it comes to polishing a manuscript. For over the past decade, Jaeth’s Eye went through many drafts, and it just kept picking up side plot after side plot until the end result looked like my kitchen sink after a long night of drinking (just kidding. I don’t drink anymore. Not hard liquor anyway. Okay fine, but only on special occasions).
The current (and final) draft was started in 2012, and I made an effort to wipe the slate as clean as I could. I dropped all POVs but three, which, considering it isn’t written in first person, is not a lot for the genre. I also chose to simplify the plot, stretching out what would have taken a book and a half into one novel, while dropping the word count without sacrificing clarity. The thing is, there is just so much material to cover in even the simplest of plots, but sometimes writers get so eager to move on to the next thing that we forget this. There’s nothing quite like a tight storyline, and it’s something I endeavour to achieve in every novel I write, just as much as I try to simplify my own surroundings.
