William Shakespeare is always a great resource for a good quote, and one of my favorites is “Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.” I like that one so much that I even have a plaque inscribed with it hanging in my laundry room (I put it there in a futile attempt to convince myself how much joy I get out of The Doing of laundry–so far unsuccessful, but I still like the quote).

Generally speaking, I agree with the spirit of the quote–there’s a certain anticlimactic feel, sometimes, in the completion of a task, particularly one in which you’ve invested a great deal of time and energy. For example, I remember when I finished my first full-length work, a novella: I had worked on it for over a year, and when it was finally completed, of course, there was joy, but there was also a brief period of “What now?” that followed–The Doing” had filled my life with joy for such a long time, that it took me a little while to figure out what to do next. Of course, once I moved on to the next project, I was back to being joyful all over again. I know, I’m so fickle–isn’t it awful?

But then there are the other times, times when you’re in the middle of a long-term project (which I am now), when occasionally The Doing isn’t living up to that joyful rep–times when it feels like you’ve been DOING this same project forever (which, of course, you have); it will never be done (which, of course, it won’t); and the prospect of doing any more work on it, even one single paragraph, is enough to make you want to sock ol’ Bill Shakespeare right on his pointy little chin.

Not so much joy there, now, is there?

Those are the days, and today was one of them, when I find it helpful to step away from the keyboard for a couple of hours and focus on things that are finite in duration; things that have visible, tangible results–in other words, things that can be DONE.

So today, I focused on a laundry list (no pun intended) of mundane tasks: a trip to the DMV to renew my driver’s license (that’s a bonus task, because it always provides fresh fodder for new characters); replacing burned-out light bulbs in all the chandeliers (hovering at the top of a 10-foot ladder has a unique way of clearing one’s mind of all distractions); scouring the kitchen sink (ugh–’nuff said). Throw in two loads of laundry (I pointedly avoided looking at the plaque while I was in the laundry room), and I found that my head was cleared, my soul was refreshed, and inspiration had returned.

So yes, while I do (on the whole) agree with Shakespeare that you can find a lot of joy in The Doing of your work, I also find that sometimes, you just can’t beat that feeling that comes from The Done.

But just because I felt the need to engage in some domestic chores today, don’t think I’m planning on doing that laundry thing every day; we all know that that one will never be The Done.