Manuscripts and movies

With my household still suffering the aftershocks of our move, it's inevitable that things are in hiding. On my best day I have a tendency to get distracted and put things down without paying attention to where they're going, but in an unorganized apartment, it's harder to figure out what I did with them.

My husband compares me to an old school video game character. I'm not sure which game he's talking about because he either didn't say or I forgot, but apparently there was a character who went around its two-dimensional digital world only able to hold one thing at a time. If the character needed to carry a key, for example, it could not carry a weapon at the same time. He made this observation when we were packing up our old place. Repeatedly I carried packaging tape around looking for scissors, then returned with the scissors but no tape.

As we unpack, I'm a bit more useful because all I really need to keep track of is the box cutter, and I've only lost that a handful of times... and we have two, so he usually knows where his is. Anyway, I'm not saying it's my fault, but some of our freshly unpacked belongings end up in pretty random places. I have a whole list of things that I know I've seen recently, but have no idea where. Good thing our apartment is pretty small.

For the most part, this isn't a problem. We know where our computers, phones, and cats are, so beyond that what more do we need? Well, as a writer, there's one more thing I need-- my manuscript! It and my best research books took to hiding sometime during the move and refused to resurface. I looked for them... everywhere... twice. No luck.

No problem, I've had a lot of other writing projects lately, a short story deadline and some editing work, so it wasn't an emergency, just a concern. But then I finished the editing, and drafted my short story, so what next?

Well, in the absence of the materials I needed to work, I went to a movie. I saw The King's Speech, which I highly recommend. Aside from being a really great movie in its own right, it also included Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Collins, Dumbledore, Bellatrix, and Captain Barbossa. (What? Those aren't their real names?) Seriously though, I recommend the movie. I do seem to be on a rather historical kick at the moment with Celia Garth, The Lost Quilter, and Blackout, so The King's Speech fit right in.

I would have spent this morning looking for my books (again) but I felt I really ought to attend the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group (GLVWG) meeting since I intend to join the group when I register for their The Write Stuff conference. I've known about GLVWG in theory for a while since Ralph Hieb is a past president of the organization. He's been telling us BWG members to join for a while, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I might have joined a year ago if I'd felt ready to attend their conference, but coming off of the first season of A Christmas Sampler signings, I just didn't feel ready for the adventure.

This year I am though, so I figured going to a GLVWG meeting was a good first step. I was right. The meeting was a great opportunity to put faces to the names Ralph has been telling us about for all these months, and network with other writers. I'll definitely be going back.

The best part? When I got home my husband had a surprise for me: my manuscript AND my research books!

Isn't he great?

Guess I'd better get back to work on it, huh?