We moved a couple of years ago. Yeah, I know, people move all the time so why am I even bothering to mention it? Well, the last time I'd moved was 18 years before that. Yep, I'd lived in the same house for almost two decades. And what's more, it was a house that boasted storage space -

and plenty of it.

Cue horror movie music now.

And since we were moving to a new place with roughly about half the square footage, a lot of that stored stuff had to go. Believe me. It really had to go. There's nothing quite like the feeling of wading through a swamp of the collected bits of most of your adult life. Look! There's my tax records from 13 years ago. Look! there's the ripped badminton net! OMG! That's where I stashed my shoulder pads and Flashdance leg-warmers!

Probably another good spot for the horror music, don'tcha think?

Sad to say, most of the stuff meant something to me at one time and I was confronted at the opening of every cardboard box with my sketchy decision making history. Why did I think picking up that aqua bowling ball at the church sale was a good idea? When did I ever think those jeans made my rear end look like anything other than the backside of a rhinoceros? And how did I end up with a carton of photos of people I don't even know?

I created three piles - one pile to go straight to the dumpster, another for Goodwill, and the third for a garage sale, because those leg warmers are vintage, baby. But wait, there's a fourth pile. There wasn't supposed to be a fourth pile. Everything must go, right?

Nope. I did find some things that I should keep. Some of them worth a bit of money - some of them only valuable in the most sentimental kind of ways. But I kept them. And where are they now? Why in cardboard boxes in the smaller storage space of the new house, of course.

Now, I've taken a really long time to get to my point here and I meant to. I'm revising a novel and in a way it's exactly like facing down a basement full of stored possessions. And so I use any excuse to take a break from it. The good news is that I have my own version of the fourth pile and I do get to keep some things in my first draft. The bad news? The other three quarters of it.

Finding long passages in my story where I'm telling and not showing? There's your aqua bowling ball right there. Unnecessary characters? They're getting chucked just like those anonymous photos. And my too clever by half over-written favorite lines? Out they go. Hmmm... once upon a time I thought they were a good idea.

But then again, I also used to wear shoulder pads and legwarmers. And if this isn't the perfect place for horror music -

then no place is.