Decluttering, Literally and Literarily
I’m decluttering. Husband and I are in the throes of getting our house ready to sell, and we are sorting through 35 years of accumulated stuff.
A lot of the stuff is things we want to keep—books, always books. Last year, we donated nearly 100 books to a local charity, so what’s left, about four bookcases full, will go with us to our new home. We need our books—Husband’s World War II history books, his wine texts, and all the novels he knows he’ll reread once we’re settled again.
I can’t imagine my life without my mom’s Gene Stratton-Porter novels or the Anne of Green Gables books—the ones she read to my siblings and me when we were kids that are now a part of my library. I have a small but important collection of autographed romance novels that comprise my “keeper” shelf; those will go to the new house, too, along with all my dictionaries, style guides, grammar books, atlases, and writing books. I can’t imagine my office without the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style leaning up next to my Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary on the shelf of my hutch.
Husband’s guitars, amps, keyboard, and sheet music notebooks are currently residing in Son’s basement, as well as all the vinyl albums he and Son simply couldn’t imagine parting with. I get that. I have a rolling four-drawer chest that holds my great-Aunt Alice’s sewing box, my yarn stash, and several knitting projects that will get done . . . when we move.
Until then, it will go to Son’s. Our kitchen got decluttered when we renovated the downstairs five years ago, so pots, pans, dishes, etc. will simply be packed up and moved. The garage? Well, except for my bicycle, the garage is not my territory—darling Husband will take care of that space.
All this decluttering has set me to thinking about writing and editing and about the Four Irish Brothers Winery series that I’m working on for Tule Publishing. Book 1, A Small Town Christmas, is already done and releasing October 29—yay! The other three are still in my head. Well, the second one is on its way, but I’m finding that I need to declutter what I’ve written; and isn’t that often the case for writers?
We’re a wordy lot, most of us, who tend to overexplain, info-dump, and build backstory like busy little birds feathering a nest. Okay, so yeah, I’m talking mostly about me, but raise your hand if you identify. When I wrote all four of my Women of Willow Bay books, my editor started the development edit with the words, “Love the background story; get rid of it.” She usually had me dump at least the first three chapters, and in one book, we took out the first five. Decluttering at its painful best, but every one of the stories became so much stronger and better when I put my heroine right into the action.
As an editor, I know how important it is to declutter a story: readers may want to know your characters’ backgrounds, but dumping it all on them in the first three chapters simply isn’t necessary. Neither is describing people, places, and things in excruciating detail. That kind of overwriting bogs down your story and slows the flow of the narrative. But as a writer, I frequently find myself committing the same info dumps and building the same kind of extraneous backstory that I get after my writers for doing.
It must be the nature of a writer to scribble (or type) endlessly—thank heaven for editors, right? Talk to me. Are you an info dumper? A bodacious backstory builder? A description writer who doesn’t know when enough is enough? Do you find yourself decluttering your stories? You know, kinda like a person who’s getting ready to put their house up for sale.
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Nan Reinhardt is a USA Today-bestselling author of romantic fiction for women in their prime. Yeah, women still fall in love and have sex, even after 45! Imagine! She is a wife, a mom, a mother-in-law, and a grandmother. Nan has been a copyeditor and proofreader for over 25 years, and currently works on romantic fiction titles for a variety of clients, including Avon Books, St. Martin’s Press, Kensington Books, Tule Publishing, and Entangled Publishing, as well as for many indie authors.
Although she loves her life as an editor, writing is Nan’s first and most enduring passion. She can’t remember a time in her life when she wasn’t writing—she wrote her first romance novel at the age of ten, a love story between the most sophisticated person she knew at the time, her older sister (who was in high school and had a driver’s license!), and a member of Herman’s Hermits. If you remember who they are, you are Nan’s audience! Her latest novel, A Small Town Christmas, which is the first book in the Four Irish Brothers Winery series from Tule Publishing, releases on October 29, 2018.
Visit Nan’s website at www.nanreinhardt.com, where you’ll find links to all her books as well as blogs about writing, being a Baby Boomer, and aging gracefully…mostly. Nan also blogs every sixth Wednesday at Word Wranglers, sharing the spotlight with five other romance authors and is a frequent contributor the RWA Contemporary Romance blog, and she contributes to the Romance University blog where she writes as Editor Nan.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authornanreinhardt
Twitter: @NanReinhardt
Talk to Nan at: nan@nanreinhardt.com
A SMALL TOWN CHRISTMAS, Nan Reinhardt
Winemaker and single father Conor Flaherty is determined to make this Christmas holiday special for his daughter even though his family’s winery, Four Irish Brothers, is facing some challenges.
High-octane Chicago attorney Samantha Hayes is looking forward to some delicious food, fine wine, small town charm, and a break from her hectic big city life when she agrees to do a favor for her boss and help his younger brother with a lawsuit that’s been slapped on his family’s historic winery in River’s Edge. She’s not expecting that her sexy new client will have a smile that will melt her heart and remind her that there’s more to life than work.
Sam falls hard for Conor, his daughter and the small, friendly town, but can she trust her instincts and risk her heart? Sam hasn’t seen a lot of happy-ever-afters in her life, but Conor and the magic of Christmas make her want to believe.
BUY THE BOOK HERE
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Decluttering is crucial in one’s own life as well as in sharing a story! I was last year where you are now in selling our house in Colorado of 26 years, giving away, throwing away and selling most of our worldly possessions in the process. We had a lot of clutter, 3 levels of our house worth! We kept enough to supply our 23 foot travel trailer and stored the rest in 2 small storage sheds, and since last July we haven’t looked back… well, maybe a few peeks here and there! You are right that it felt so good to finally declutter after so many years of accumulating!
In regards to books, we accrued quite a few, albums too, and gave most of them away to book stores and record stores and sold at least 100 or more albums at a record convention. And yes, in the writing of my own book, an autobiography, I did get quite wordy! After several professional and self-edits, I had to rewrite several chapters. I even deleted approximately 6000 words from the story, yet it’s still a bit lengthy at 124K. It’s been an interesting life! Thanks for your article and best of luck decluttering and selling your home!
Thanks for stopping by, Donna! That is a long book, but it takes what it takes to tell the story, right? Best of luck to you with your book!
Love your thoughts on this topic! Decluttering our home is something I’ve had to get better at, due to a “kid” moving across the country and basically leaving his bedroom untouched and filled to the brim. LOL For me, decluttering my writing is familiar in my work as a journalist and I’m working on it with my fiction. Decluttering in life and writing are a balancing act, aren’t they?
Cathy, thanks for stopping by! Yes, it is a balancing act in both life and in writing! I’m finding lots of interesting stuff I knew I had tucked away in closets, but I had forgotten about. Most of it can go because my kid sure doesn’t want it and if I’ve forgotten it, then it’s meaning to me is pretty much gone as well.
I enjoyed reading your article, Nan and can certainly empathise with you regarding decluttering but more in the literal sense than the literary one! Why do we hoard so much in the West? We work hard to make money to buy things that we don’t need and then have the daunting task of getting rid of it when we downsize. In the Spring my husband and I put our Spanish house on the market in order to spend more time in the UK. Two hundred books found their way to a local charity shop, together with bags and bags of clothing. It felt surprisingly cathartic to say goodbye to so much stuff and we only shipped back a few treasured possessions. Back in England and still in the decluttering mood, I started the whole process again. So far I haven’t missed anything.
On the literary front and still in my frenzy of tidying up, I decided to collate, delete and edit two hundred short stories that had been idling on my laptop for years. The result is my latest book of concise and I hope, not too wordy compilation of flash fiction titled ‘Stories to Go.’
Hi Sue, thanks for stopping by! Wow, that’s quite a project! Good luck with flash fiction!