Libi Astaire's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

Last night I was cleaning my office, in preparation for Passover. For those who don’t know, during Passover we Jews are forbidden to have in our possession even a crumb of leavened bread. Therefore, during the weeks before the holiday begins we give our homes a thorough cleaning. Since I don’t eat at my desk, I wasn’t looking for stray cookie crumbs or bits of pretzel lurking in my desk drawers. I also didn’t expect to have to do more than a dusting and a quick swipe of the computer keyboard. Yet by the end of the evening—so much for a light dusting!—I was once again amazed by how much can be learned from cleaning for Passover. So, here are four insights into how that cleaning is a lot like writing:

1. There’s Always Something to Edit--I’m not a Passover-cleaning newbie. I’ve been through these desk drawers before. I know that everything in every single drawer is essential. If it won’t be used today, then it will be used tomorrow or sometime during the year. So how did I end up with two very full king-sized garbage bags that had to be dumped at the end of my cleaning session? Drawers, I discovered, are like paragraphs. Just as I don’t need three maps of Tel Aviv scattered about my office, I don’t need three sentences that say the same thing scattered about a page. Lesson: Don’t be smug; every chapter or article can be pruned and improved.

Read the rest over at my blog.