Weekly Events January 2007

Today is Saturday, the 27th of January. This month is almost over, with much to do, catch up on, and organize.

This has been another busy week for me as a writer. Catching up on letters and correspondence, researching, sending query letters, catching up and organizing e-mail, and of course, the never ending stack of snail mail to file, and trash. This week, I sent out ten query letters, and more thank you letters. This was not a week of responses from publishers and magazines. Mostly junk mail - straight into the kitchen trash, or shredder it goes!

Now, I'm reorganizing my work area. If there are writers out there who have things organized at all times, I would love to know the secret to this. Yesterday, I spent the bulk of the day going thru old files and magazines on the book shelves and in file cabinets. My new rule is anything over a year old gets trashed, or placed in a box. Since I am a travel writer, I have many research stacks to complete. Anything over one year old -- file - shred - or trash. In the travel industry materials change - restaurants close, hotels change hands, etc. and that is why when I write a story, I confirm the resources. After all, I have a reputation to maintain, but the sea of paper work and research material collected leaves me overwhelmed. Today, I have three boxes to file and put away since most of the material is less than six months old.

I can't help wondering what my family would think if I died suddenly and they were left with all of this material to sort through. Perhaps they'd call me a pack rat? Gosh, I hope not.

Enough of the blog for today. Those boxes are calling my name and I want to experience the thrill of accomplishment, not the frustration of being overwhelmed.

Maybe I'll just pile all of this 'stuff' into one gigantic stack for the trash collectors!