Nesting

When I was expecting, I'd go into super-nesting overdrive just before the baby came. I had the cleanest baseboards in town. You couldn't find a dust bunny if your life depended on it. It was hormonal, for sure, but it also presaged months of minimal housekeeping as we dealt with diapers, sleepless nights, and an altered focus. Life changed, big time.

Nothing was more important than that new baby.

I do the same thing before starting a new book. Major cleaning, dusting, organizing. The new book is like a new baby, all-consuming. Who cares about polishing silver when you're deep into another, fictional world. Crawling into real life takes a ton of effort, and when the book is going well, it's not worth expending the energy. You need to hoard the hours for this new baby, this creative work.

So let the small stuff go. Give that WIP your all. It's a process, and you don't want to miss a second of its new life.