With every job come the necessary housekeeping items. When you paint, you need to clean your brushes when you are done. When you do scientific research, you have to explain your findings to others in understandable terms. When you teach, you need to also grade papers and give feedback.
You may like these housekeeping tasks or dread them, or simply accept them with no real feeling either way. I am finishing my book by putting together the appendix. It's not glamorous. It's not full of feeling like real writing. But it needs to be done for the book to be complete. I don't mind. It's part of the process.
The question I have, since these tasks seem mundane and boring, is do you write about them in a book, including them with more vital activities? Now, if you are writing a non-fiction, how-to book the answer is an obvious, yes. But what about a biography or a novel?
My belief is that the answer to this is all about the feelings you want to evoke. The tasks, in and of themselves, may not be interesting, but can they be used as tools? Can the endless cleaning up of toys by a mother help you feel exhausted along with her? Or can it be the means for the mother in the story to discover important information about her child? Or could she discover a lost earring and uncover an affair? Could her meaningful thoughts be allowed to flourish while performing the mindless task of picking up toys? The possibilities are endless.
In the end, as a writer, you must keep the end goal in mind. If the menial tasks in life help you tell your story, then they should be included. If they are simply filler and mindless, who needs more of that in their life? So, I will continue to work on my appendix and remind myself to use these tasks to move my stories forward or for good blogging fodder.
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