Perspective
I moved all my bedroom furniture around this weekend. Except for dropping a very heavy bookcase on my foot it went well. My desk is now between two windows. In moving my bed I found half a dozen lost vitamins and bear-sized dust balls and one or two dropped pens. I expected more lost detritus. Oh, there was that hideous semi-boot I wore when I broke my toe. That was wedged under my desk. I had a notion I might need it again someday. Um, no. Yucky.
So now when I'm approaching my room everything looks different. I can't see my bed. There's a straighter path from the door to the window. Things feel newer, fresher. I like it. In fact, I used to move my furniture a lot. Every few months or so it seemed. When that book, Eva Moves the Furniture, first came out I thought it was about a woman who rearranged furniture a lot. It isn't.
What has this to do with writing? Perspective. When you see things from a different place you might still see the same things but they look as though they've changed or you're viewing them from a previously unexplored angle. When I'm writing a character I see things through their eyes. Sometimes I have trouble getting their perspective. So I'll think about their life and what would likely or not be their perspective or sometimes I'll decide to nix their perspective. I did that in book two. I was having a great deal of trouble with a certain character's motivation. Then I decided that the character in question shouldn't have much of his perspective shared because it would make certain questions too easily answered. So I pulled back, away from his view.
It's an interesting exercise to write a scene in your story, book, diary, whatever, from the perspective of a stranger idly watching your characters through a store front or inside a movie theater. Outsiders have different insights. Not surprisingly, I make up stories about the people around me (though not as often as you'd think as I'm too busy imagining the lives of the imagined, not the real). It's fun to imagine what other people are up to, right? And that in itself is a new perspective, which can be gained with a whole lot less pain and sweat than moving every piece of furniture in your room.