Now designed for gracious living

[desperance]

Last week, I had new friends in my house for the first time. Just in and out, picking up some books.

Last night, I learned that as they drove away, one turned to the other and said, "We have seen the house of Withnail."

Aaargh! I guess I really should clean something, put some stuff away, throw some stuff out. Something. But there's just so much, and it's all such a mess, I don't really know where to begin; and housework makes my back hurt; and there's so much writing to do, and actually that's more urgent. Isn't it...?

Maybe I'll just be a recluse, and stop letting people come round. That'd be easier. Yeah.

* wanders off, distractedly picking something up here, putting it down there *

Comments

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

There are some advantages, then, to old friends: we've seen your house before, and you've already heard our jokes about it.

(David's coming this evening, I must clean something. Or change bedding, or something. Just to show willing.)

[sdn.livejournal.com]

if it makes you feel any better, i suspect we have similar housekeeping styles. this, however, will make you feel worse, or maybe it will make you want to clean (as it did me).

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks for this. It's probably just what I need. (Sigh...)

[deadcities-icon.livejournal.com]

You should congratulate yourself.

OTHER writers clean house to avoid writing.

Or make endless pots of coffee.

Or smoke endless cigarettes.

Or read old magazines and claim it's "research".

Or....

...I should just really shut up now.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I actually sometimes bribe myself with cleaning. "Finish the short story, and you can clean."

Not that I like cleaning. But I live in a two room apartment, and sometimes mid-draft the clutter grows terrifying.

"FInish the novel and you can eat" works too, but only when one is sufficiently close to the end of the novel when one starts with this particular technique of self-abuse.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I actually sometimes bribe myself with cleaning. "Finish the short story, and you can clean."

Bear, you're just wired wrong. That is so perverse.

I live in a two room apartment, and sometimes mid-draft the clutter grows terrifying.

I don't think the square footage is significant; clutter is like work, it expands to fill the space available. I used to live in a single room, and it was full; now I have a house, and it is full. If I had a mansion, I'd fill it.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Coffee - check.

Cigarettes - uncheck (I gave up smoking. Now my deskbound oral stimulation comes from more coffee and chocolate-coated coffee beans in the mornings, tea and cake in the afternoons, wine and nibbles in the evenings. God, I miss those cigarettes. When W H Auden was asked - impertinently, I always felt - why he smoked so much, he said "Insufficient weaning. I must have something to suck...")

Magazines - check (and of course the interweb, LJ, e-mail...)

Cleaning house is the only thing that's missing. Maybe it's not too late for me...?

[julesjones]

[snicker]

I know when I've got a really bad bout of writer's block by the way housework suddenly becomes something that I really must do now. Good thing we don't have a cat, or I might be tempted to make the rasfc cat-vacuuming joke into reality.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Is there a strange drug dealer in your bathtub?

Because otherwise, you're not THAT bad off.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

He's rolling a Camberwell Carrot as we speak. (One of the chilli varieties I grow is called the Bulgarian Carrot (http://www.parkseed.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalogDisplay?storeId=10101&catalogId=10101&langId=-1&mainPage=prod2working&ItemId=5272). This is because it comes from Bulgaria, and looks like a carrot.)

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

you're doomed.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I'm getting the fear.

[devonellington.livejournal.com]

Chaz, your house is lovely. There's nothing wrong with it. It's YOUR house and YOUR life and it's geared to work for you, not for anyone else.

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

Well, there is still the option of having Candy come round and put up lots of shelves for you...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

An option I look forward to exercising, as soon as may be. [Chaz lvs Candy. Sigh...]

However, it does need to be pointed out that one of the reasons why so much of my property is on the floor these days is on account of Barry's delight in stalking along shelves knocking things off 'em.

Also I was Ikea-shopping with a friend who has a whole flat to fit out (she's just moved, from San Francisco to Newcastle; people are odd...), and I figured out in the process that my total fetish for systems of organisational infrastructure (from stationery-type folders and filing systems to clothes-type boxes and baskets and wardrobes and, you know, the whole damn thing) is actually just another kind of displacement. I believe devoutly that Somewhere Out There is the perfect magical system that will suddenly make me an orderly person; all I have to do is keep shopping until I find it, buy it and fetch it home.

Yeah, right...

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

You just need a TARDIS, don't you?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Nah. I'd still fill it. Unless it's infinitely expansible...?

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

That's the thing about Tardises (Tardisi?). They certainly seem to be pretty much infinite on the inside. And hey! Bonus! Time Travel capability.

[lcohen]

just rub vaporub on yourself to keep warm and keep writing?

(was it vaporub? something mentholated, i know.)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

It was Vick's Vaporub when I was a kid, when Mum used to do that for me, when I got "chesty" (for values of "chesty" that include bronchitis and burgeoning asthma). Then I graduated onto menthol cigarettes (ahh, Consulate...), and then proper inhalers.

Which only just kept me alive last night: at a gig, old friends of mine onstage being silly (http://www.newropestringband.co.uk/), they exploded a bag full of feathers. I was halfway back, and still very nearly got the hell out of there while I could still gasp the breath enough to do it; in fact I stayed and the inhaler saw me through it, but if I'd been in the front row (or sans inhaler), I would've had very genuine troubles. Hospital troubles, probably. Now I 'spect I'll have to explain this to them. Sigh...