Goodbye Clutter

The cleaning and reorganizing I started on Tuesday has continued through the rest of the week. Yesterday I dragged the vacuum in, and today I've been labeling file folders and sorting through all the various papers, recycling some and filing some. I can't believe how much clutter had accumulated in my office.

While I was sorting, I had a look through my folder of rejection slips that date from 1984 to 1999, spanning articles, short stories, and novels. Some of the rejections were just my own query letters returned to me with a "not for us" stamp on the top. They made me smile. Some of my queries and rookie mistakes made me smile. I'll keep the rejection letters. If nothing else, they prove just how long I've been at this game. But I don't need the clutter, and I'm glad to see it go. My office looks like an office again--a place where someone might actually write a book and run a business.