In an effort not only to make myself a better housekeeper, but to keep my house in such a condition that anyone could drop by at anytime (though no one does, and I do prefer a little notice) and I wouldn’t be embarrassed by it, I’ve set myself a daily housekeeping task. So far, I haven’t been great at keeping up with most of them, except for the Monday (Kitchen) and Friday (Laundry and change bedding) tasks. I’m getting really good at making those a habit, so maybe it’s just a matter of adding each additional room one at a time on its specified day to make them all habits.

But anyway, that’s not the point of this post. Yesterday, as I mentioned, I had an onsite at a client, which threw my whole Monday routine into chaos. This was compounded by going out last night: down to the Cool Springs area to (a) stop at Barnes & Noble to see if they have Stand-In Groom yet (THEY DON’T!!!!) and (b) to go over to Lifeway for Ted Dekker’s book signing. I’ve been to several book signings that that particular store many times—usually on a Saturday afternoon—and they’ve never had a ton of traffic. So I always like to show up, even if I’ve never met the author nor read his books before, just so that someone’s there. Plus, I’m almost always likely to run into one or more members of MTCW at these events.

All that to say: I didn’t get around to my housekeeping task yesterday.

Today, I wasn’t really sure what to blog about. I thought about giving y’all another refresher post, but I’m as tired of those as I’m sure you are. But until I knew what I wanted to blog about, there was no point in trying. So, instead, I decided if I wasn’t going to do my Tuesday housekeeping task (clean up, dust, sweep, and mop in the living room), I would do the kitchen. (It’s also so much easier to lose weight with a kitchen that’s always clean, but that’s a post for my other blog.)

Because of cleaning the kitchen, including wiping down all surfaces (when was the last time you wiped off the top of your fridge?), it’s made it a lot easier to keep it clean throughout the week—in fact, it’s made it so that I don’t like leaving anything out because I know if I do, it’ll just make my Monday task that much harder (see, this is what I’m going for—and hope to get to with the rest of the house). For many, many years, I’ve been the kind of housekeeper where, if it’s out of my line of sight, or if I don’t have to look at it often, I didn’t worry about it. And “out of my line of sight” includes everything from about the waist down. One of the (very many) downsides of being overweight is that leaning over to pick something up or clean it is highly uncomfortable—between the back hurting and not being able to breathe, it’s just hard to get down there. Now that I’m losing weight, this excuse is waning somewhat, as it’s much easier to just bend over and pick something up (or wipe up a spill) as soon as it falls.

So as I’m mopping the floor today (I usually use the Swiffer Wet Jet, but it’s amazing how much cleaner the mop gets the floor, and how things I have to scrub at with the Swiffer come up with one swipe of the mop), I remember for the umteenth time that there’s a produce sticker stuck to the floor.

Now, I don’t see it every day to be reminded of it, because it’s usually covered up by the rug that I have on the floor at the sink. But I’ve seen it every week for the past several that I’ve been doing this. Yet by the time I think that I need to scrape it up, I’m already tired from sweeping and mopping the whole kitchen (no, it’s not really that large).

But it made me start thinking about writing.

(You knew it would, right?)

As writers, we all have our little pet/favorite things in our story, whether it’s an opening line/scene, a certain word used repetitively, a character who doesn’t add much but we love him, info dumps, or whatever it may be. Or it could be that there’s a certain place in our story we know could be stronger if we put a little more effort into it, but we just don’t feel like it.

Critique partners or contest judges may ding us on these “stickers” in our writing. But we stubbornly go along, either not wanting to get rid of it or not wanting to put the effort into fixing the problem. Or we try to cover it up. We move it, we revise the scene even though we’ve been told to cut it, or we throw a couple of “showing” verbs into a passage we’ve been told is passive/telling.

The sticker’s still there. It’s just under the rug.

As writers, we have to be willing to face the pain that comes from removing the sticker. The shortness of breath that comes from cutting those little pet scenes/words/characters. The back pain from applying butt to chair to spend the time necessary to revise or completely rewrite those passages that aren’t working. Or, in my case, applying butt to chair and getting the first draft written!

Now, while I go scrape up that sticker, I want you to tell me what your “sticker” in your writing is and how you’re prepared to deal with it.