digital spring cleaning

Taxes? Check. The latest revision of my YA book? Check. Final disgorgement of huge bin 'o books husband set on my office floor? Check.

That's three major left-brained and/or clear-headed activities concluded in the last 48 hours. I'm gonna confess something here. Linear organization is not my strong suit. Sometimes I stand in front of a big, fat mess of odd and jumbled items and my brain just fires off like a pinball in a special bonus round.

I have adopted any number of compensatory strategies for this, including, surrounding myself with pictures of order, e.g. my screensaver feature the perfect symmetry of the Viennese Medical School my father attended; even the twigs emanating from the twin naked elms that flank the central building are identical.

Whenever my hard drive crashes, after I get done throwing stuff, I'm secretly glad because of the tabula raza thing. I get a brand new start, with the hope that this time I'll create files that make sense. I'll not put the document with the kids' social security numbers in a file cryptically called "dugoutisms," for instance.

But today I decided not to wait for the next virus, and get rid of a bunch of crap on my computer, and I started with my Firefox bookmarks. I just deleted them all. I mean, what was I thinking, bookmarking "how to build a snake feeding box" two years ago. Like I'd need that info again? And, I'm planning on following it up with creating useful Twitter lists, rather than the catch all: lit stuff. I mean, pretty much everyone I follow has something to do with literature.

Writers, do you have crazy filing systems for your work? What are your compensatory strategies?