Ralph's Writing Blog - Clutter

From the Tao of Writing -- Clutter

I think about clutter in my life a lot. It's kind of ironic that thoughts of clutter clutter my mind. Here is an excerpt from The Tao of Writing that I rediscovered the other day, and I thought I'd share it.

Who’s to say what qualifies as clutter? Some writers claim that their work thrives in chaos. In most cases, it’s rarely as chaotic as it might appear. Even the chronically messy tend to have order in the piles that surround them. The truth is most of us crave order, largely because it can be so hard to achieve.

I live amid stacks of student papers, notes, books and journals, memos, flyers and such—a debris field that would put a frown on the merriest of “Merry Maids.” I manage to work in this crowded environment until it seems to build to a critical mass, and then I start shoveling, clearing every flat space until I can breathe—figuratively. The truth is, I rarely write at my desk in my office. Instead I write at the kitchen or dining room table in my home. Unlike most of my house, the dining room and kitchen tables are open, flat spaces in good light, usually free of clutter. Both rooms have large bay windows overlooking several acres of creeping charley and bits of lawn under giant oak, maple, and towering pine trees. I find the extended space almost meditative. Whatever it is that creates the particular environment that is so conducive to writing, in my case it is spacious, green, and ordered.

Clutter is distraction. The flow of writing is inevitably stopped, interrupted by the noise of clutter. The photographs in Jill Krementz’s The Writer’s Desk of noted authors and their work-spaces bear me out. Writers are, for the most part, a tidy lot. We realize that the universe flows regardless of a sink full of last night’s dirty supper dishes, the hiccups of politics in a small town, or volcanoes erupting off the coast of Hawaii, but most writers are not so resilient and must write in an ordered universe. Of course, it may be a quirky, on the edge of chaos kind of order, but order it is nonetheless.

In effect, most of us concentrate better, focus better, and write better in an organized, well-lighted niche.