Blog Post: Can You KonMari Your Writing Life?

(originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium)

The cult of Marie Kondo started 8 years ago, when her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up released in Japan. Three years later, it hit shelves in the U.S. and made a household name of her eponymous tidying technique, the KonMari Method. And for those living under a rock, Netflix rolled out a new series in January called Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, featuring the tireless tidying queen herself.

I’ve been a fan of minimalism and word-slinging for several years. My aesthetic has never been the nothing-out-of-place, all-white Swedish-inspired look, though I can appreciate it. No, I fall somewhere within the Neutral Milk Hotel and Hogwarts design scheme, and that aesthetic runs parallel to my writing style. I spent ten years writing copy wherein the base of my job was to cram as much information into as little space as possible.

But things happen, right? I left my job and minimalist-ish apartment to move in with my boyfriend and freelance out of our shared office. Combining households may be the most fun thing to do in theory that is absolutely no fun in practice. In two years, we’ve been able to integrate approximately two areas of the house: the kitchen and the hallway. By that, I mean there’s nothing in the hallway and I got rid of all my cheap appliances and embraced his Wüsthof knives.

In that same span, I also questioned how my workspace affects my writing and discovered pretty quickly it’s distracting power and vowed to overhaul both my writing and my workspace. But, just like the families in Tidying Up, the inclination moved down the priority list until that new-year-new-you impetus rolled around and here we are. As I considered how to begin KonMari-ing our office space, I saw how Marie’s organizational ideas can be helpful for both your closet and your copy.

The basic theory of KonMari is to focus not on getting rid of things necessarily but on keeping things in your life that “spark joy”. In the book, as in the Netflix series, this theory manifests through a giant pile of all your things (categorically) where you toss/donate/sell anything that doesn’t spark something within you.

Here are a few of Marie’s suggestions and how to interpret them for better and more productive writing.

“When you tidy your space completely, you transform the scenery. The key is to make a change so sudden that you experience a complete change of heart. The same impact can never be achieved if the process is gradual.”

There is a lot of great writing advice geared toward resisting continuous edit. Marie’s theory starts on the idea you’re working with an already cluttered space — or, rough draft. Maybe you’ve tidied throughout but you’re still at the end of a big thing and need to get it right. Marie endorses this theory as a revision where you’re throwing away all the extraneous details and keeping what you love, what’s important to the narrative.

Does it spark joy? A place where her clients on Tidying Up hiccup in the process of re-organization is in Marie’s trademark question that should be an ultimatum to everything you own (or word you write): does it spark joy?

At the outset of a project, it’s easy to see the pieces that spark joy. One woman in Tidying Up unabashedly loves Christmas, so she’s not planning on getting rid of any part of her mammoth collection of nutcrackers and garland, etc. that’s overwhelming her living room. Marie doesn’t put up a fight for two reasons: 1) She’s Marie Kondo and intimidation is not her deal, and 2) If it sparks joy, then it meets the criteria and stays! She’s not here to dive into psychological issues; she’s just here to suggest ways to get that collection in the basement where it belongs, arguably, 11 months of the year.

If something isn’t working, we all have to ask ourselves if everything we’ve included its integral, or does it spark the right joy within you — that just right feeling. “The trick,” Kondo says, “is to handle each item. Don’t just [decide] after a cursory glance that everything in it gives you a thrill.” Do you need it or do you want it?

It’s also important to remember we’re dealing with a loose definition of joy. Sure, we all want things in our work that give off “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness,” but there’s little drama in that description. If you’ve been writing long enough, you’ve heard the phrase “kill your darlings” and it’s the same concept here. If it’s working, go with it. If it’s not or gives you pause — reconsider it.

Reduce until you reach the point where something clicks. In the book, Marie recalls a moment where she was tidying, tidying, tidying — always getting rid of stuff but never finding satisfaction with the result. Frustrated, she sat down on the floor and thought: “Look more closely at what is there.”

Once I finish a draft, I’m all about the revision. No, I’m ready to publish. I’ve written all these paragraphs, so I know what they say — right? I’ve argued my point, I’ve provided examples, I’ve left a bit of heart and soul right there on the page. But countless times someone has read the piece after me and discovered misspellings, places where a little reorganization helps, and even holes created when I got too focused on throwing away passages and not focused enough on the project.

Once you have a draft, it’s popular advice to put it away. Stephen King suggests stashing it in a drawer for 6 weeks. Read it again, and edit until it clicks.

Follow your intuition and all will be well. This is probably my favorite advice because my theory is that the minute we see or read something, we know its place in our lives or work immediately. You know a three-page back and forth with inconsequential characters about inconsequential subplots meets your page goal but does nothing for the overall narrative. You know. Just like you know you don’t need the hardcover and paperback version of the same book just to have.

If you’re worried about trusting your gut and throwing away something important, save as a new draft and move on.

Appreciate your possessions and gain strong allies Another great piece of advice is to appreciate what you have. When Marie walks into a home — all various stages of clutter and clean, she never makes the homeowners feel shame for their clutter. The reason she’s there is that they’ve asked about tidying up, so it’s important, even as homeowners cry over letting go of sentimental items, or feel the weight of responsibility on one persons’ shoulder, Marie is there for encouragement and a reminder of what we’re here to do.

“Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived,” writes Anne Lamott in her seminal book on writing, Bird by Bird. It does, which is why even at the end of all the tidying, no space is a museum. Don’t let shame keep you from writing what you want to write; respect the words and the work that went into them.

Gain confidence in life through the magic of tidying. “I love a mess!” Marie says on the show, with genuine enthusiasm. She’s just entered a surprisingly tidy dining room, then shown the contents of three catchall drawers in an antique hutch.

My KonMari’d closet took almost a week to get into shape. It wasn’t just pulling everything out, or laboring over what to toss/donate/sell, it was trying to figure out how to organize. I spent a fair amount of time standing in the space and thinking about how to make it both clutter-free and functional. Per Marie’s frequent suggestion, I bought several plastic bins and am pleasantly surprised with the big difference it made. As I showed off my progress to anyone who would listen, I realized that writing is a process and every time we go through that process — be it daily journalling, rough drafts, published works — we learn something and apply it to the next piece.

Did this method make me a more productive writer? So far, yes. Change can happen when you think about the process differently. A lot of writers take part in NaNoWriMo every November because it’s a much faster pace than they’d typically write and encouragement is free-flowing. As I struggled to organize the material aspects of my life, I found more time to focus on writing deliberately. With intention, as new-agers say.