And again, I find myself a wee bit disturbed by the immense glee I'm taking in unpacking my books and arranging them just so. There's even a bit of hand clapping and squeeing going on.

Signed,

Sad little woman.

Is anyone else thinking that they want to pay Barb to help them move next time?

Is anyone else thinking that they want to pay Barb to help them move next time?

SNORK. No, you really don't. I drive people batshit with my organizational tendencies (i.e., the tying together of peripheral cords so they don't show). I think msbelle's the packing/moving fiend among us.

I love unpacking. I am an unpacking FREAK. When I moved in, DAN was kinda unnerved by my freakish need to unpack shit as soon as it came in the house.

I may also have a bit of a blank journal addiction. I've found ten, so far, and I know there are more.

I love journals, but I don't allow myself to buy a new one until I'm done with the old one. My current journal is plain black; I was in a very minimalist mode when I got it. I've been working in it for several years, since I'm an -- at best -- sporadic journaler.

I use them for story plotting. A new story gets a new journal. I just found one from five or six manuscripts ago. Kind of freaky to see scene drafts and character info more than seven years later. And really interesting to see how much has changed and how much has remained as I originally envisioned it.

Oh, that's a good idea, Barb. Like Jenny Cruisie and her storyboards?

And -- ooh, that give me a great excuse -- er, REASON -- to get a new one. WEDDING JOURNAL! Heh.

Like Jenny Cruisie and her storyboards?

Sort of, except without the procrastination factor.

Not meant as snark, either. I love Jenny to death, but she's so crazed sometimes, about her personal writing rules and they often seem to contradict each other. Like she loves the subconscious aspect of the storyboards/collages, allowing The Girls in the Basement free rein to tell her what the story is about, then she writes her Don't Look Down draft, where she allows herself further rein but inevitably she writes herself into a corner where her "rules" are concerned. Then she goes and pokes and prods and shoehorns the story into the framework her rules have dictated, decides it's bland and missing something, goes back to the collage, allows the Girls free rein to tell her what's wrong, writes some more Don't Look Down material, then realizes it doesn't fit the "rules" again, lather, rinse, repeat. She's so thoroughly wedded to her rules and her OCD tendencies don't allow her to deviate from their framework at all. And it's worse when she's off her meds.

Which makes this a totally random off-shoot from the topic of journals other than to say, yes, sort of like Jenny's storyboards. I also storyboard in my own fashion, using pictures and compiling them into an iPhoto album dedicated to the manuscript.