Courtesy Scott Pilgrim vs The World

It’s amazing how moving something small can make a huge difference.

We’ve been in the process of rearranging our apartment. The latest change saw a large stack of things by the lower corner of the bed, meaning I’d have to crawl out of it in a somewhat awkward manner. Over the weekend (Sunday night in fact) we moved things again, and I took it upon myself to shift that stack a bit, resulting in a much easier way for me to get up and about first thing in the morning.

I woke this morning with more energy and determination. All because I moved a couple boxes.

It’s hard to say how things will turn out when you start rearranging things, cleaning them up, putting them in a different order. The same thing could be said about writing, especially the revision process. Move a couple of words, put sentences in a different order, and hey presto, something that was just a brain-dump of information becomes taut and dramatic. Clean up a few things, and a mess becomes a masterpiece. It can even cure that thing we used to call ‘writer’s block’ before some sagely men in manly beards told us writer’s block is a crock.

Has this happened to you before? What are some good examples? Do you have particular days when you clean things up, be it around the house or in your writing?