If writing were easy, everyone would be doing it.
While there are grammar and spelling rules to follow, most of the time writing is about blazing your own trail. This is hard to do, though, for those like me who feel the need for structure in their projects and writing schedules.
Wouldn’t it be great if there were a set of principles to follow from the beginning to the end of the writing process that allowed you to breathe and enjoy writing? I think some can be found not in the world of writers, but in the world of cleaning and tidying. What am I talking about? Marie Kondo.
Is it possible to follow her KonMari principles in writing? Is tidying something that can even be applied to writing? With a little imagination, yes, it’s possible. Let’s take a look at how to use KonMari for writing.
What is KonMari?
For those of you who don’t know, Marie Kondo is a world-renowned tidying expert, whose book and Netflix series are taking the world by storm. In both, she outlines six rules to follow when cleaning up a house, inviting the viewer to clean up their own home through determining if an object “sparks joy” by speaking to their heart.
Her website lists the six rules, reprinted here:
- RULE 01: Commit yourself to tidying up
- RULE 02: Imagine your ideal lifestyle
- RULE 03: Finish discarding first
- RULE 04: Tidy by category, not by location
- RULE 05: Follow the right order
- RULE 06: Ask yourself if it sparks joy
This is a very conscientious approach and I particularly like how it describes things as having feelings. I’ve always personified items and had a hard time throwing them out, so I’m keen to implement this Shinto-inspired attitude as I thank items for their service and getting rid of them.
(For further reading on the KonMari, check out this article on The Spruce.)
How can KonMari ideas impact your writing?
For those of us writers that have trouble starting and finishing a manuscript, or find ourselves getting caught up in writers block and other entanglements of writing, Marie Kondo’s ideas can be implemented to make writing just a little bit easier.
In order to fully KonMari writing, however, we have to redefine the six rules to be writing-based. Here’s how I’ve done it:
- RULE 01: Commit yourself to writing
- RULE 02: Imagine your ideal manuscript
- RULE 03: Finish drafting first
- RULE 04: Edit by element, not by chronology
- RULE 05: Follow the right order
- RULE 06: Ask yourself if it sparks joy
Let’s take a look at each in more depth.
Rule 01: Commit yourself to writing
Of course, it’s impossible to KonMari for writing if you don’t have a story to work with. Writing can be hard, but it’s ultimately rewarding. Just think about the first time you finished a manuscript. Didn’t it feel good?
If you haven’t finished your first piece of prose yet, don’t worry…visualize what it will feel like when you’re done. The weight of an idea off your shoulders, the words on paper and no longer in your head. Perhaps in hardcover in a bookstore.
Those dreams can only come true if you put in the time to write. This can mean long nights or passing up time with friends and family on occasion. Writing is a commitment and shouldn’t be undertaken flippantly. Once you take that leap, don’t allow distractions to get the best of you. This is where rule 03 will come in.
Rule 02: Imagine your ideal manuscript
Kondo says “the question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.” Similarly, you should write what you want to read. Is there an idea that you always wished were explored in writing? Write it yourself. You’ll get to write it the way you want, and you’ll have a ready-made audience in others looking for the same thing.
This is also the time to determine things such as voice and tone, plot, setting—all the things that will come together to make your story unique. Does it take place today or in the past? Will it be told in the first or third person? Is it written for a sophisticated audience or is it more aligned with the younger crowd?
Once you’ve made these decisions, you’ll be able to begin the writing process.
Rule 03: Finish drafting first
It’s long been said that the first draft doesn’t need to be good, it just needs to be done. This is wise advice, for without it writers can get caught up in the particulars and lose focus, or worse, move on from the story altogether. I know I’m guilty of this; something seems off, but rather than push through and mark it for another visit later, the story stalls out.
Allow yourself to perform a brain dump. Get every idea out there. Edit only when you’ve finished. You don’t need to write on a computer—at first. Handwritten manuscripts allow less room for editing on the fly, and dictated stories can be, by their very nature, disjointed and in need of another run through.
Of course, before serious editing can begin it’s necessary to have a clean manuscript ready, and for that, a typed-up manuscript is best.
Rule 04: Edit by element, not chronology
Kondo’s directive for tidying a house is to gather all the items of a category together—such as clothing—and then discard, rather than walking throughout the house and cleaning a room at a time. In order to KonMari for writing, it’s necessary to deviate a little from the location idea here, but that doesn’t mean just going through the book once or twice, making edits, and calling it finished.
A true copyedit, whether performed by yourself or another editor, is focused on the story as a whole. The individual elements of the story are audited and massaged to make sure they fit together. By reading a chapter at a time, things can be missed. To better check the cohesiveness of your story, I suggest creating an outline, if you don’t already have one. This can be in the form of storyboarded index cards, an Excel spreadsheet, or the traditional outline.
Rule 05: Follow the right order
Once you have the outline you need to edit your story, it’s time to dive in and begin the revision process. In the KonMari strategy to home tidying, there is a specific order to follow in order to fine-tune the discovery of joy. Clothes are weeded out first, followed by books, papers, miscellaneous items, and then sentimental items.
In order to KonMari for writing, I advise following these elements of the story—plot, character development, tone and voice, chapter, and incident. Contrary to Kondo’s order of starting with less trivial things and moving on to more important ones, the order I lay out focuses on the important big picture first before moving on to smaller things. Why? To save you time on additional drafts.
Plot
By editing first and foremost with plot in mind, you’ll find yourself making sure everything you’ve written fits into the larger schema of your story. Focus on what works and keep that. Discard what doesn’t work. Discover a big plot hole? Fixing it early on allows you to correct the skeleton of your story before fleshing it out. There’s nothing worse than thinking you’ve finished your story only to find out something doesn’t work while you’re putting the finishing touches on.
Character development
Your characters are the vessels in which you tell your story, so it’s important to have them consistently written. More importantly, for protagonists and antagonists it’s paramount to make sure they grow during the course of the prose. Whether this is a bettering of oneself or a slide down a morally-negative path doesn’t matter. What matters is that each aspect of your story allows your character to move forward in their journey. Things that don’t serve to stretch them should be reconsidered and removed.
Tone and voice
Like your characters’ interactions and dialogue, tone and voice need to be consistent in your story. Reading through to make sure verb tenses are correct and vocabulary is similar throughout will go a long way in making sure your story is enjoyable for all. This is a very important element to focus on when your work-in-progress is written over the period of years. It’s only natural for your writing habits to change as times passes; it’s important to update words as you’ve grown out of them.
Chapter
Once you’ve made sure your story is complete in terms of plot, character development, and tone and voice, you can focus on the chapters you’ve written. Do they serve a purpose? Do they need to be reordered to make the story flow easier? If you have your plot down pat, then these changes will already be in your mind and will be easy to implement.
Scene
Similarly, the individual scenes that make up your chapters can now take center stage. Don’t make major plot changes here. Rather, focus on the necessity of the incident. If you’re looking to reduce word count, consider combining scenes or sliding the most important piece of information into another scene. Make sure you’re showing and not telling. Kill your darlings.
Rule 06: Ask yourself if it sparks joy
After all this hard work on a manuscript, hopefully the answer is “yes!” But if not, take the time to figure out why. Is it a certain scene that bores you? Find a way to rewrite it to make it more interesting. After all, if you’re not interested in writing and reading it, others won’t be either. Sometimes things in books are boring out of necessity, but this should be the exception and not the rule.
Conclusion
Kondo’s method is all about decluttering life to make future tidying easier. By getting the hard stuff out of the way first, the rest of the job is more about maintenance and seems doable. Applying KonMari for writing is the same: it’s a lot of hard work up front, but the back half is downhill and, hopefully, much less stressful. Writing a story is hard; it should be enjoyable and something to look back at with pride.
What do you think of KonMari and, more specifically, KonMari for writing? Do you plan on trying the principles of tidying to your writing? Let me know in a comment below.