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Today, there was an article in the New York Times about messy workspaces. Here’s the gist of it: Having a neat workspace apparently engenders other good habits (such as eating better), but having a chaotic workspace apparently engenders creativity (such as dreaming up new uses for Ping-Pong balls).

Well, yeah.

Back when I was a full-time practicing attorney, I worked in a very tidy, very sterile office with one perfectly groomed corn plant, and legal tomes on the bookshelves and every single piece of paper I needed either electronically filed or housed in organized manila file folders. There were certainly moments of creativity in that job, especially with respect to brief writing or research, but I wouldn’t have defined the bulk of the work as “creative.”

Now, I teach, edit, and write, and I would say that every second of my job has some creative component. How best to impart an idea either to a student or in words. How to write something so that one person understands it . . . or so that thousands of people understand it. It’s challenging and chaotic and guess what? My office at home and my mobile office (aka the mom-mobile, where I do most of my writing) are VERY messy! I still have my electronic files and manila folders for organization but there is a more-than-moderate amount of chaos in both spaces.

I’d been feeling awful about it (especially coming from the law office environment) and kept thinking I should do a full-on clean sweep of everything, and thanks to that article, I’m not feeling so terrible. So while I am doing a little tidying up, I’m not going nuts and trying to make everything sterile. It’s a good balance.

So remember last week when I told you I had a time-sensitive giveaway? Here’s the deal: at RWA (the big national conference for romance writers), one of the publishers handed out these little postcards with QR codes on the back, each of which is good for one free review copy download of the book. I have postcards available for authors such as Eloisa James, Monica Murphy, Sophie Barnes, Karen Erickson, and Jennifer Ryan.

So much awesomeness! But here’s the catch – – they all expire on 10/1, so after I send them, you’ll have a tiny, tiny window to download and read.

And I’m not saying the New York Times article was what prompted me to clean up my piles of swag (but it totally kinda was), so drop me a line in the comments section letting me know your most recent motivating factor, and I’ll randomly pick some winners! Because of the tight time-frame, the contest ends MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 at 9 p.m. (Pacific time), and winners will be announced on Tuesday so I can get these suckers shipped off to you. U.S. only, please, since I still have to send these in the mail!