Blending and Purging

It's that time of year again!

The time when people look back at the chaos of winter and wish to sweep it all out the door (or under the rug) and start afresh. Spring is the time of renewal and rejuvenation.

For me, it means cleaning out my closets and dressers from clothes I no longer wear. Time to look through all the bits of papers and notes I've collected over the year and donate them to the recycable bin. It always means a time to look at he files on my hard drive, or story ideas in my notebooks and see which ones are viable fodder and which are going to be added to exsiting ideas for a bit of blending.

I like to take two seemingly different story ideas and see how well they will mesh together and mix them into a word soup. Add a bit of fresh seasoning and stir. Oftentimes I find what one story lacked was the addition of that other idea that pushes it from being ordinary to something really different. It's a fun way to challenge myself or to simply gleen ideas that are sitting around doing nothing. I like to see them working instead of taking up space on my computer.

Purging is also a very important part of spring cleaning. My bookshelves runeth over with freebies I've gotten from judging numerous published writing contests over the past year. The ones I really loved will be shuffled to my keeper shelf, the others will find a home with my mother or the ladies at work. This is a very important step as it frees up premium shelf space for the books I'll get in the next few months.

How do you spring clean? Do you include your writing into the mix?

-Kate