It's almost the end of the year. Just two days left, including today. Did you get a new calendar, day planner, or whatever system you use to keep track of the days and your schedule? I still need to get a wall calendar. Mainly I use it for keeping track of how often things need to be done. I have a small calendar which I keep in the car to keep track of my hours at my other job. They give out the small calendars at work each January. Free is good.

Anyway, here we are at the end of another year. Are you ready? I think this is a good time of year to clean out your desk and your files. The physical ones you move off chairs, shove under the desk and try to put back in their proper place in the proper drawer. As well, the files in your computer, the ones which clutter up your hard drive and rob you of space you could be using for other, more personal clutter.

How about taking the time to do a year end clean up? Go through everything. Toss out what you don't really need and organize what you do need. Go through your idea folder and reminisce of ideas past. Any that can still be used or recycled?

Go through your invoicing (assuming you freelance) and make sure nothing is outstanding or neglected. Go through your receipts now, why wait till tax time? Make sure you're ready to claim all your writing expenses. Check and see what you can claim if you haven't already done so.

Dust and tidy your bookshelves. I know you have them. Round up all those CD's and put them back in the right places. Treat yourself to a new waste can for all the odds and ends that come along for tossing out during the average day. Consider a trip to an office supplies store and look at pen holders, filing systems and whatever else could help you sort out and maintain the every day desktop clutter.

If your clutter is so bad you have old coffee cups around your work space you need a heavy duty clean up. Get out one of those big green garbage bags and toss everything but the computer into it. Work your way backwards. Pull out what you really need and leave the rest in the bag, with the bugs.

Once the clutter is controlled and your work area is decontaminated (don't laugh too hard, I've seen those cookie crumbs in your keyboard)... consider better use of your work space. How can you keep things tidy and easy to find? What needs to be in easy reach and what can be stored below, in desk drawers?

Maybe it's time you made your work space a bit more personal too, add some finishing touches like a family photo, a few inspiring quotes you can print out in a fancy font. Whatever creates the write atmosphere for you. (That was no typo).

Good luck and happy 2004 for all of us.

"I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me." -Anna Quindlen

"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." - Franz Kafka

"The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things." - Ralph Waldo Emerson