Cleaning For the Cleaning Lady by Kristina L. Martin

One of my writer friends recently hired a "cleaning lady" to come once a week and clean her house. My friend then pondered if she should be spending so much time cleaning for the cleaning lady* when, after all, the cleaning lady was being paid to clean. People chimed in, mostly telling my friend that it was ridiculous to clean before the cleaning lady arrived; however, many admitted to doing the very same thing. I disagreed. The silence that followed was more in keeping with having issued a personal cloud of methane rather than a differing opinion. I stood by my answer then and I still stand there now. Alone perhaps, but standing by  my words.

Years ago I too had a cleaning lady. It was during my pregnancy with my third child and due to some minor health issues, cleaning the house became too much for me. Every Wednesday morning at ten a cleaning wizard arrived and two hours later left behind a sparkling clean house and a happy pregnant lady. For many months she arrived armed with buckets and mops, and for many months I enlisted my family to help prepare the house for her arrival. We all cleaned for the cleaning lady and we all enjoyed having a house that was actually clean more often than not.

But we didn't really clean. We created order. What we did looked like cleaning because it was the obvious stuff. We tidied up. We picked up all the embarrassing stuff laying about that you wouldn't want strangers to see if they stopped by unannounced. We sorted through the bits and pieces of life and threw away the junk and put away the stuff worth hanging onto. We basically got our stuff into an orderly fashion. No one complained because we all knew that our money was better spent having the cleaning lady scrub toilets than sort our junk mail. Peace and order reigned and the house looked clean when the cleaning lady came with all her stuff. Then, she actually cleaned the house.

She cleaned all the nooks and crannies that you know are really filthy but you avoid looking there. She scrubbed dried dribbles of juice off the floor. She wiped the dust off the fan blades. She vacuumed the crumbs from beneath the couch cushions. She scrubbed the ring from around the bathtub. And the effect was that the house really was clean and it was orderly.

In other words, when we cleaned for the cleaning lady, we got rid of all the chaotic bits and pieces that needed attention so that the actual nitty-gritty could get done.

I've been cleaning for the cleaning lady lately in my novel as well.

Regardless of your writer's style, pantsers and plotters alike must take that very ugly first draft and turn it into an actual novel. It may take many drafts to get a novel to the point that it is ready to be submitted for reading. And it may take many hours of re-writing rather than editing to make those drafts happen. That process of honing our words from rough draft to final draft is much like cleaning for the cleaning lady.

Before anyone can read your novel, you have to go through it much like you would go through your house, creating order by picking up the random bits and pieces left strewn about, tossing out the junk and putting in its rightful spot the stuff worth keeping. As we edit, we clean our words. We clean them up so that we can send them to the book cleaning lady--the editor.

This cleaning and then calling in the professionals is true whether a writer is writing novels or short stories, novice or seasoned veteran. We live in our words and make a right mess of things, only to turn around and tidy things up in order to have them seriously cleaned up. Sure we could simply write our words and then hand it over to someone else, but not many of us have the means to do so, just like most people can't afford to pay someone to pick their socks up off the floor. Instead, we do what we can on our own and then find a cleaning lady we can afford.

I am blessed to have readers with great editorial eyes as well as readers who notice the color of shirts and cars and such things. I am blessed with fairly inexpensive cleaning ladies, if you will. I create order and they help me clean up my novel. I catch the embarrassing bits that I would die if anyone saw me doing (such as subject/verb issues) but my cleaning ladies help me clean up the clunky bits of dialogue or the places I tell instead of show. Between the two of us, my word-house is fit for visitors.

So please don't fret about cleaning either your house or your novel for the cleaning lady. She'll get more of the really deep cleaning done if you've tidied up all the junky bits first.

*I used "cleaning lady" here because the person I hired was a lady; however, there are lots of cleaning services that employ men.