Spring is traditionally a time for cleaning house, dusting out the cobwebs and making everything shiny and fresh. But while we’re clearing our closets, do we ever check our hard drives? How many half-finished drafts and character sketches do you have sitting neglected in your files? Your challenge this week is to look through your old writing files and do two things. First, find three documents that can go in the trash; if a bit of writing is painfully bad and has no hope, you need to let it go. (It may not seem like it’s hurting you to keep it, but unfinished projects can weigh you down mentally. Deleting those files can feel amazingly good.) And second, find one thing worth salvaging, then work on it for at least 30 minutes. Then save it on your desktop and make a point to keep writing, editing, and revising it until it’s done.
