Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Argh Ink

I’ve arrived at the realization I always come to about now in any of the Twelve Days things: twelve days is a long time. I don’t know how people stood it each Christmas. By about day four of the party, I’d have been saying, “You know, I’ll just take a nap for this one.” But the good news is, the back half of my office is now clean:

And it probably took me twelve days if you count fifteen minutes as a day. Which I can’t so now I have to do the front half of my office:

Technically that’s More Floor, Printing Shelves, Brainstorming Wall, and the bookcase, although the bookcase is really part of the library . . . no, it’s there at the end of my office. It has to be in here, too.

The floor is going to take hours. Ugh. So I’m going to ignore it and do the printer wall. I’m pretty sure I can do that in under an hour. There’s not that much paper to read on there. So here’s the wall:

Big revelation here: Why do I have reference books when I have the internet? So they went except for the crucial stuff like Beyond Jennifer and Jason, and that went on the shelves behind the other desk, so I freed up a lot of space. I put the mailing supplies down at the end because I don’t mail that much (so why do I have so many envelopes?), and then I got to the computer box. I had ten different trackballs and mice (mouses?), one still in the box. Who knew I had a mouse habit? And Bob, if you’re reading this, I appear to have three firewire cables. So :p. Also two phones because I kept switching out phones until I realized the problem was in the line. And two rechargers for something. Probably the old cellphones. Anyway, untangling that took some time. Then there was the universal recharger Bob told me not to buy because it was lousy but I ignored him and it was lousy, so it’s sitting on the floor glaring at me now. Also an ancient Airport; if I ever do a book on UFOs, it’ll be great for the collage. And a hard drive Mollie made me buy that I’ve never figured out how to hook up. It’s hanging out with the universal recharger, smug in its defiance. But basically the shelves were easy. Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, really.

It was the top that was the time sink. Electronics. Cords. USB ports. Bleah.

I’m going to have to do those boxes on the floor tomorrow, shoving them out of the way to do the printer wall was annoying. But I hate the thought of those damn papers because you have to look at EVERY ONE OF THEM, such a time sink. But in the meantime, here’s the finished printer wall:

I can’t get enough distance on it to show you the whole wall, so take my word for it, it’s clean. And really it was the easiest of the lot so far. Except for hooking up the label printer which still isn’t right. Electronics. Bleah. Thank god i only have one wall of them.

What I’m coming to realize is that it’s not the fifteen minute idea that’s cleaning up around here, although I think that’s a good idea, it’s that I have to post every day on it. The urge to wander off and do something else is huge, but I have to post so . . .

It’s really all of you reading this, not the fifteen minutes. If I thought nobody was looking, I’d be watching TV right now.

Still here, huh? Okay, today’s job is The Other Desk, the one I use to spread notes out on and whatever else I need more surface for. Except, of course, I haven’t seen the surface for awhile. And there are four shelves underneath for stuff, but this time I can’t remember what they were for. So it will be a great adventure:

Actually, the shelves behind it are organized, so it’s just the desk top and the four shelves underneath. But it’s gonna take longer than fifteen minutes. That damn window seat was close to two hours by the time I went through all the papers there. And threw them out. I couldn’t believe the stack of notes I had from writing Agnes. So I did the same thing here. Lots of blank journals–they’re like black pens, I swear–books, I’d shoved here, organizer boxes that belonged on the shelves I couldn’t get to because of the stacks of stuff on the desk–but basically it was stuff I had that I didn’t put away, just shoved on the desk. So that has to stop. And now it looks like this:

Which means I can go watch TV now. Tomorrow, it’s back to the floor.

I love this window seat. It’s a great place to curl up with books or even with a laptop (I had outlets put on each side for when the battery runs down), and Lucy and Wolfie love it (Bernie calls dibs on the pillows under the desks). But none of us have curled up here for a year. Too much stuff:

So, fifteen minutes. Ha.

I found more tape (packing, this time); another flamingo pen; more post-its (I’m putting post-its in every bag for the Cherry Con) including some Krispy Kreme post-its (thank you, Tina); the analysis of Lisa Livia’s subplot, all colored coded and everything; a CD opener that Gaffney gave me for my birthday last year, at least six back issues of Rolling Stone, a Xerox copy of The Cinderella Deal for a rewrite, my manicure box; notes for Agnes with both Bob’s and my handwriting, a collector’s item if I hadn’t thrown them away; notes for D&G; many magazines; another hotel receipt; many books; a big round gold metal thing (no idea what it is); one of my favorites valentines with a fluffly little hamster on it that says, “Please notify me immediately if this cute little critter fails to brighten your Valentine’s Day” and then on inside it says, “his contract is up for renewal and the folks at the greeting card company are evaluating his performance” which cracks me up every time I see it; notes for a lecture on subplots I never gave; the plan for the He Wrote/She Wrote blog which we’ve been faking since I lost it; a huge packet of notes for Agnes with drawings for the wedding cakes which were supposed to be a much bigger part of the plot and with the anger management research for Dr. Garvin’s dialogue; a box of Tea Forte tea bags; and the editing notes from Jen for UMF. There was more–I found the cactus shot glass I bought for inkgrrl when we were in Arizona a million years ago–but that’s the gist.

Strangely enough one of the biggest problems was pillows. I had fifteen, along with a twin size comforter. It’s just not that big in there. So now there are ten pillows and a throw instead. That helped a lot. The lobster is from a trip to Boston. I said, “I have to have that lobster,” and Bob said, “No you don’t,” and then I carried it on the plane and the steward told me I was going to have to choose between the lobster and Bob. When I hesitated, he relented. Bob has, of course, forgotten all of this, but I’ll always have the lobster.

So now it looks like this:

Wolfie is thrilled. He can bark at the deer from the window again.

It’s the little things that make life good.

I know, the floor’s not done. But I want my desk back. The last time Mollie was here, she took everything on the desk and put it in a box and shoved the box on the window seat so she could work. The box is still somewhere on the window seat, buried, and my desk is a hellhole again. So I will return to the floor, I swear, but today it’s the desk. Actually, there’s another aspect working here: I don’t want to do the floor, the floor is boring, and even if I double the fifteen minutes again, it STILL won’t be done, but I’m pretty sure I can do the desk in fifteen minutes and then I can work there again. The desk is a TREAT. Kind of.

So, here’s the desk:

Mollie’s theory is that there should be nothing on a desktop that you don’t use daily. Of course, she’s also anti-tchotchke which I feel is draconian. But clearly there’s stuff on here I don’t need at all. Like . . .

Very early, early notes from DLD when Bob and I were doing Dueling Binders. He’s the Binder Boy, I just did mine to compete. As I remember he was trying to put all our e-mails in there. Then his binder exploded. I’d already given up so mine is fine. Except none of these notes make any sense in conjunction with the final draft. We really wrote that one the long way around. Rememer what a great character Hannah was? Oh, right, we cut her. And the jacket, the jacket was great. Right, we cut that, too. Never mind.

Empty journals and notebooks, eight of them. Completely empty.

A fan letter from 2001.

A rough floor plan of Two Rivers.

A list of flamingo mentions from Agnes.

A picture of a wedding cake from Agnes research.

An RWA from October of 2006.

A copy of the invitation to a party I threw in Columbus when I was in the MFA program. (How did this stuff get on my DESK?)

Two packages of batteries.

A magazine about Bermuda, because I might set a story there some day.

The instructions to my new keyboard that say, “Turn off your computer, attach the keyboard with USB cord, restart your computer.”

Notes from a tarot reading I did. A year ago.

A notebook with notes in it.

My new keyboard.

My old keyboard which works just fine, thanks.

Two pieces of bunny paper to make an origami box to hold bunny tails for the blanket I’m making for my editor’s baby. (I think he’s three now.)

Many sticky pads that I transferred to the tray that’s already full of sticky pads.

A set of twelve colored Sharpies, still in the package.

A list of septic tank contractors in Clermont County.

A picture of me that I took back when I discovered the camera in my laptop.

Three boxes of Kleenex.

Box of industrial strength Velcro.

Lecture notes for the Cherry Con on fiction basics.

A package decoration.

Passport photos that make me look like a drab middle-aged woman from Ohio.

A 2007 calendar, with nothing on it for Sept through Dec, which means I stopped writing things down.

Tissue paper from Martha By Mail.

Wrapping paper. I think it migrated here from a collage.

My passport holder with my passport which needs renewed.

A To-Do List.

Scraps of torn paper with AKMG notes on them.

Many empty envelopes.

Tylenol, still in the box.

Two packs of spiral bound notecards. NO idea what I was going to do with those.

My copy of a contract.

Laura Resnick’s book, Rejection, Romance, and Royalties: The Wacky World of a Working Writer. We had lunch and she gave it to me before I could buy it. I’m sure it’s fabulous, since Laura is.

Two $30 off cards from Staples.

Two reams of printer paper.

The sample piece of Corian from my bathroom remodel. Over a year ago.

Ohio postcards I bought to send to Bob to annoy him.

Two giant paperclips from the Humanities Council.

The squeeze cherry promo from Bet Me.

My Wile E. Coyote cup and my Wonder Woman cup.

A box of pushpins.

The box that I put all the cords in from my electronics so they’re not snaking all over the place.

The surge protector.

A copy of the British Welcome To Temptation.

Three prescriptions I never filled from 2006.

The paperwork from the car I bought last November.

My contract with BenBella for Coffee at Lukes, signed but not sent.

Rough drafts of handouts for the Cherry Con workshops.

AKMG notes on full sheets of paper.

An old cellphone. From two cellphones ago.

The SMP catalog with Agnes in it (double-page spread, we were very happy).

Flamingo pen.

Devil Duck Drive.

Two pair of earrings.

An earpiece for my last cellphone.

The tape of a psychic reading I had in New Orleans when RWA was there (five years ago?)

My nametag from the Maui Writer’s conference (four years ago?)

Two boxes of pens.

Two bras.

A hotel receipt.

Oriental Spice hand cream, tiny little jar.

An old Russian wood swan from my grandfather’s house.

A Mac plug.

A card that says, “Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet,” that I bought because I’d forgotten all about Roger Miller (Dang Me). Must go to iTunes and see if they have him. No, must finish cleaning desk first.

A copy of the Spanish Bet Me (from when I put the cover up on one of the Argh posts).

A Xerox of the Queen of the Night bas relief for D&G.

My Heroes back-up DVDs from iTunes.

The keys to the truck I sold my nephew. Hmmm.

Wolfie’s disgusting old dog collar.

The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner. Good book. Meant to read it again for Agnes and then misplaced it. Oh, well.

Anthropologie catalog. Good for collages.

The Fortune Quilt by Lani Diane Rich. Terrific book.

Queen of the Night book, research for D&G.

THe end from a giant styrofoam drill given me by my tech crew from when I did high school theater tech. The end broke off and I’ve been carting it with me ever since. The rest of the drill is somewhere, but the end always ends up on my desk. It’s signed by Mollie and Matt; the rest of the names are on the rest of the drill. I love this piece of styrofoam.

An inhaler.

My therapist and my editor’s business cards.

Two curtain rings.

A check register from 2005.

Two trackballs.

A box of TicTacs.

My Wacom tablet and mouse.

Two cups of pencils, pens, scissors, whatever.

The phone.

That’s it.

Well there are also the four shelves beneath the table. One has a tray full to overflowing with stickies. Another is full of cups of pens. Nobody needs this many pens. Then one had a tray full of notecards, my stapler, and a box of business cards, except I never use business cards, so they’ve been there for years. And the last one had a tray of . . . stuff. Ten rolls of scotch tape, a box of report cover labels (huh?), two rulers, Galactic glue, a stack of Unfortunate Miss Fortunes bookmarks that SMP sent us, paperclips shaped like dogs that my mother sent me, a paper punch, a light bulb, rubber bands (I never use rubber bands), white out, three measuring tapes, a wireless mouse, a cherry paper clip (hello, Jill!), four more rolls of scotch tape, a roll of packing tape, a lanyard to hold a name tag, a small Krispy Kreme mirror, the spare battery to a computer that is now in upstate New York, and nine mini rolls of scotch tape (no, I don’t know why there’s so much tape).

And ta da!

What did we learn from this?

Fifteen minutes is not very long. If you subtract the time I took to list all the stuff I found, it was about half an hour to clean off the desktop alone. The shelves were maybe another ten minutes. It’s still fast, but fifteen minutes, I dunno. OTOH, fifteen minutes SOUNDS short so that’s why you start cleaning.

And I am never allowed to buy notebooks or sticky pads again until these are all gone. Ditto for black pens and Scotch tape.

And a clean desk is a beautiful thing.

[You know, this has to be a lot like watching paint dry. Really, come back in ten days and I'll do a real entry.]

I tried to start cleaning an hour and a half ago, but then I got distracted and ended up IMing with Heidi about small, tacky amusement parks which is research for a book I’m not even sure I’m going to write. So now it’s ten o’clock but I only have to do this for fifteen minutes so PLENTY of time. In fact, I could go get a Diet Coke . . . no, no, fifteen minutes.

And tonight we’re doing the floor. It seems basic. Foundational. It looks like this:

Well, that’s part of it. There’s also this:

And there’s more but the office is small and I can’t get much distance with the camera.

The first thing I’m noticing is that I’m transferring a lot of stuff to other places. The mob books and mystery criticism to the first floor with the rest of the books-that-are-leaving. The big box of shells into the studio. The trash into the garbage. I found out I have five wastebaskets in an office that’s about eight by twelve. Clearly, my heart was in the right place. But after taking out all of that, there’s still a lot of Stuff. So to work.

Half an hour later . . .

So I kept going for a full thirty minutes and it’s clear there will be a Floor Part Two and a Floor Part Three. The biggest things I learned:

I must stop tearing things out of magazines. I’m never going to make those recipes and the other stuff probably won’t work in any collage I’m going to do anyway. So I threw away the recipes and stuck the collage pictures in a box because hope springs eternal.

About half the stuff in here doesn’t belong in here. Most of it went to the studio, which is its own disaster area and getting worse now that I’m cleaning the office, but really, why did I have two cans of blackboard spray paint in here? That huge box of shells? All that collage stuff? It’s insane.

I clearly wanted to clean up the place since there were five wastebaskets, but I think one will do.

A small office is a good thing. It cuts down on the urge to find a box to put that in and you just throw it out instead. I do not want more shelves or more boxes. I want fewer things in this office. If I could find that Morgenstern book again, I’d read what she said about areas. I remember that she said that rooms should be organized like a kindergarten room with a different area/station for each activity or focus. I think. Anyway that would work in here if I could just get rid of more freaking STUFF.

But it’s not bad for half an hour. And no half an hour is not cheating. It’s a minimum of fifteen minutes. If the spirit moves me to do more, I can. Actually it wasn’t the spirit so much as how appalled I was at how much stuff didn’t belong in here. And then the spider the size of my fist was a sign I should stop.

So tomorrow: The Floor, Part Two. Sequels already. But I really think the floor is the only thing that’s going to have to be done in multiples. I’m pretty sure. I’ve got two desks, a window seat, a storage wall, a research and brainstorming wall, and a bookcase that really is part of the library. That’s six things and I’ve got twelve days. I can squander two or three of them on the floor. Okay, maybe four.

And here’s where we are now:

One day on those boxes by my desk, and one day on the boxes in the doorway. I have a feeling that’s going to be more than fifteen minutes, too. But the rest will just FLY by.

I’m sure of it.