5 Creative Truths I Needed to Discover: A Decluttering Story

In January of 2020, I started decluttering. Again.

This is something I've done since I was little. My copy of Organizing from the Inside Out for Teens (co-written by Julie Morgenstern and her daughter, Jessi Morgenstern-Colón) is one of the most ruffled and well-loved books on my shelf. I especially love her idea that it's not about following a "one size fits all" system but rather if your possessions are organized in a way that makes sense to you and supports how you live your life.

More recently, I heard about the KonMari Method and started incorporating some of her suggestions into my days, too, such as thanking the objects I pass on or recycle, and looking at things from the perspective of whether they spark joy.

With the organizing and decluttering process being a welcome part of my life rather than a despised one, I actually thought my possessions, digital and physical, were in decent shape, until a milestone birthday on the horizon got my wheels turning and an unlikely trio of movies changed my life.

How to Write Descriptively with Detail Clusters

Have you ever looked back on a scene you’ve written and wondered why it feels a bit ... generic?

You’ve developed amazing characters. You’ve crafted a fascinating plot. It flows, but something is missing.

The missing ingredient might just be detail.

14 Easy Ways to Bring Your Scenes to Life

You know that feeling when your writing starts to just get thin? Like if it was a three-dimensional being, it would be so insubstantial it would just faff about and never get anything remotely interesting or useful done?

Yeah. I think most of us have written scenes like that. And it can get even worse during NaNoWriMo, when you’re pushing yourself to meet your daily word count, and you’re running out of steam and getting discouraged because you’re not sure what to say and oh my gosh what am I going to do, I’m never going to finish this, and I may as well just quit now, there’s no way I can reach this word count by the end of the day, let alone 50,000 by the end of the month (or whatever your goal is).

*takes deep breath, in and out*

Too many of my writing sessions have looked like this: pushing myself to meet a self-imposed deadline and getting down on myself because my writing is getting thinner and thinner by the minute.

We need easy ways to jazz up a scene, to beef it up a little without having to throw a dragon into the mix (though you could do that, too). If you’re suffering from writer’s block, pick one of these ideas, throw it at the page, and see if it sticks. Worst case scenario, you and your character will have fun trying!

How to Honour (or Toss) Old Bits and Bobs of Writing

If you've been writing for any length of time, chances are you have some old story snippets laying around ... but what to do with them all?

This week, I was helping Mum sort through stacks of old paperwork and stumbled on a handwritten piece of a story, about half a page long. A paragraph into reading, my shoulders were tense and I was waiting for calamity to ensue, and then ...

I burst out laughing, the tension defused. Mum had pulled off one of the best reversals of tone, and false alarms, I've ever read.

Once our giggles faded, we started to wonder, what to do with it now? It's years old and has no connection to any of her current stories, but it's a nifty piece of writing and worth keeping.

Still. What to do?

We have a few options when we come across an old piece of writing.