Lame Comparisons

The title says it all; proceed at you own risk.:)

I've been Spring Cleaning for the last two days. And if you are anyone who has known me with any degree of intimacy, you will know that I don't love cleaning . . . to put it mildly. I do it, don't get me wrong, but I don't like it. So doing super-deep cleaning for two days in a row with one day left to finish tomorrow, is not my idea of a great time.

That and it's exhausting. I'm very tired. But you could officially eat of any surface in my kitchen and laundry room, even the floor. . . . even the corners.:)

On top of that, my entire walk-in closet which I share with my kids (my husband and I joke that out clothes are divorced) is completely organized and everything is where it belongs. Why is that such an accomplishment? Ready for confessions of an author? I have been so busy the last couple of months that weekly organizing has . . . well . . . been relegated to the back burner. So every time we've had company--and we've had a lot of company the last couple of weeks--every other room gets cleaned, and the leftovers . . . well, they've been set in the closet for "later." Yanno, the kind of later you hope never really comes around.

Well, it's later.:)

So I dragged everything that was on the floor (except the dressers . . . yes, I have a very big walk-in closet in my very small house) out into the master bedroom . . . which is now the kid's room (long story) and sorted through every little thing. (I actually found a bottle of nail polish I've been looking for since we moved in! Yay!:))

The result? My closet looks gorgeous! And since I decided to move my cedar chest somewhere else in the house, it also has more clear floorspace than ever. An excellent job, if I do say so myself.

So . . . you ready for the lame comparison?

Spring cleaning is like revisions. In a lot of ways. There are a lot of little details in a book that 90% of your readers will never notice. But your editor will have you tighten them up for that ten percent. And like my kitchen, even though 90% of you (and hopefully closer to 100%) have no desire to eat off of my floor, I have still made sure that you could should you strange little heart desire it. And all those little plot holes you know are there that you just hope no one will notice? Kind of like my mess shut away in the closet. Well, open that door and clean them out. Because unlike regular guests, a good editor will not stay out of that closet. She will go snooping around in all the proverbial nooks and crannies of your story and find all the problems and make you clean them up.

And it's a good thing.

And like Spring Cleaning, it's tiring, and it will wear you out. But, also like Spring Cleaning, it will feel SO good when you're done.:)

*End of Lame Comparison*

Ciao!