A WRITERLY DILEMMA
What Do I Have in Common With Famous, Financially Successful Writers?
You might be surprised
While a few Harlequin novels and some articles in major — well, biggish — publications hardly put me in the category of famous and financially successful writers, I’m happy to note that I do have a few things in common with some of them. Take Virginia Woolf, for example. Virginia, according to her husband Leonard and her editor Lytton Strachey, was messy. Very, very messy.
She was an untidy writer, indeed an untidy liver, an accumulator of what Lytton Strachey used to call “filth packets,” those packets of old nibs, bits of string, used matches, rusty paper clips, crumpled envelopes, broken cigarette holders, etc., which accumulate malignantly on some people’s tables and mantelpieces.
Presumably, Virginia, unlike moi, was successful and affluent enough to afford a housekeeper, but maybe she gave instructions to leave the mess alone. My messiness sometimes depresses me — not to mention my partner, although he’s hardly Prince Pristine himself. Still, I think my occasional bouts with melancholy might be helped by more orderly surroundings. A cluttered desk is like a cluttered mind. I think someone said that, but I don’t know who. Perhaps I would if both my mind and desk were less…
