The Writer’s Clutter
In the process of writing, clutter accumulates. A writer’s clutter can be physical, like the bundles of papers, notes, and books on my desk. It can be processual: the swarm of edits on the marked-up page of a draft, or the ‘offcuts’ file of this essay which is longer than the essay itself. It can be digital – a cluttered computer desktop, hundreds of browser bookmarks, accumulations of draft files – or mental, in the psychic turbulence of the process, in the ideas never followed through, in digressions and tangents and distractions.