The item to which I am referring is that best-of-all-possible gifts, especially for a struggling writer (is there any other kind?) – the Round Tewit. (Repeat it slowly, syllable by syllable, until you get it. Return when you’ve finished groaning.)
And it would seem that I have found one. I have finally cleared my desk. And this time I don’t mean by relocating the piles to other locations. (Or, indeed, to other piles.) No, I’ve done filing of documents that appear to date back to those dim distant times B.E. (before earthquake); found the seven thousand blue and black pens that have made themselves one with the fabric of space and time (just not previously my space, or any time soon), and put books into bookcases. I’ve even found where my tax files were hiding! So now I have a clear desk, and many fewer excuses.
The downside of this is having to go through my piles of poem drafts. Lordy lordy me. I mean, I had a reasonable idea of which piles were made up of poem drafts, and roughly where in the room the relevant piles for poems X and Y were. But I had been holding off from putting them into folders properly. And like most delaying tactics, it has reached around and sunk its mandibular protrusions into my nates. Whole forests have died for them. (The poems, not my nates, although I thank you for the compliment.) I am quite seriously going to have to get a new folder for this year’s poems. Which is good in some ways – I always used to have a separate folder for the poems of each year, but then I became a hell of a lot less prolific, and have essentially been filing everything I’ve written since returning from the UK in the one place. So while my quantity has dropped, I think (and hope like hell) that the quality has risen substantially.
The other depressing thing though is that I had a mental list of all the poems I’d written (or started writing) this year, and I’ve been thinking variations upon a theme of “you know, there have been some damn fine poems this year! I’ve not done badly at all.”
Except that half (yes, really and truly and mathematically) of the poems I’ve been crediting to this year are, in fact, from 2010 … sigh!
A Dark Feathered Art 
Well done that woman! But, ssh! just don’t say it tooo loud, because that’s when you get promoted to the top desk – with even more piles of paper, forms, files, paper, in and out baskets, transfer to baskets, to be scrutinized later baskets and the basket at the bottom that still has last Septembers (2010) grey earthquake dust on it!
Of course the awkward moment now arises when you realize that there are no more TWA’s* left, and you well … ahem … sorta … just gotta … write?
*Time Wasting Activities
Ian, I can’t imagine ever running out of TWAs – I have a husband, twelve chooks and a one acre garden. Oh, and a house.
Fingers crossed for today to be another good writing day – it’s raining again (oh yeah, it’s raaaaaining again …)