The cookie, for those who are wondering, is coconut chocolate chip. I wasn’t going to get a cookie today, but I had a deal with myself that, if there was anything with coconut in it, I could make an exception. I wasn’t going to wear my long beige skirt yet again, but it’s comfortable, I strongly dislike wearing pants, and always have. I think it’s in my blood. Anyway, the point I’m getting to, besides the fact that I did have a topic in mind for today’s post, over the weekend, but cannot, for the life of me, remember it now, is that things change. That’s a given.
Since I like to plan and organize, earlier in the week, I made lists of things I need to get my office at its peak functionality. Big things like replacing the ancient desktop that is out for blood (specifically mine) and refuses to recognize the internet, medium things like deciding whether it’s better to find a way to get the super awesome office chair out of the storage unit 200 miles away but will not fit in the back seat of Housemate’s car, down here, or drop a few bucks at a local retailer to get an okay chair, because the makeshift camp-chair-with-smushed-pillow no longer works, to smaller things like a wireless mouse. I have never had a wireless mouse. Besides my intrinsic distrust of technology (apart from technology that will let me play The Sims) I’ve always had a thing about wireless whatever.
Never saw the point. The electronics dude at the retailer I visited when my mini mouse died advised me away from a wireless mouse for a couple of reasons, battery life included. Valid points, and I appreciate his expertise, but I don’t like hauling around a big, corded mouse when I’m on the go. Big, corded mouse is also gray, and having a big glop of gray wires is not my favorite part of taking laptop pictures. Hence, need for pink mini mouse, no tail (Does that make it a hamster?)
My original plan for today was to get all the handwritten notes I made for Her Last First Kiss from last week, transcribed, so I could send them to N, in anticipation of our breakfast tomorrow. That’s not what happened, or it hasn’t happened yet. I had some time sensitive tasks to clear off my desk. I critiqued the chapter a writer friend had sent me, looked over a pitch for a workshop Melva and I would like to try out at a regional conference this year, and wrangled a couple of other tasks. Researched for an upcoming H&H post, and took care of some domestic issues before they became tornadoes. Much easier to think and write when the environment is not in chaos. While doing all of the above, I also reminded myself that the transcription didn’t have to happen today.
It will happen. That’s how books get written, at least my books, and, as it so happens, those are the only ones I can control, so works out well that way. I’ve already told N I’m going to bring the notebook and scene cards with me, so we can talk about them. Some things are, very likely, going to change. We’re going to spread the cards out on top of the table between us, move some around, combine a few, maybe throw out a card or two. What’s going to go in that document after we talk isn’t going to be exactly, word for word, what I have there now. Pretty close, I’m sure, but I will have picked up threads I didn’t know I’d dropped, ensured that everything planted in the beginning is harvested in the end, and then…then I go forward. This phase of creating the book will be over, and it will be time to print things out, go scene by scene, and Get This Done.
That’s both scary and exciting. There have been more manuscripts I can count that didn’t make it this far. I miss some of them. Others weren’t meant to be, but all were started with the best of intentions. This one…this is one of the books that found me, instead of the other way around , and it talks back. I wanted Hero to be blond and a musician. He told me, pretty soon into our venture, that he was ginger and an artist. Pen and ink, thank you, though he’s done other things to get by, but that’s his natural bent. Heroine, too, wouldn’t get in line, and, now, I’m glad that she didn’t, because I like her the way she is, rather than the way I’d originally wanted her to be.
Not that different from looking at the schedule made at the start of the day, before the day actually started day-ing, but there’s something to be said for rolling with the punches and taking things as they come. It all gets done, not always in the order I’d intended, but what I’ve got is what feels right, and I am okay with that.
Typing With Wet Nails 
I have a wireless mouse AND keyboard. I can’t imagine being tethered to the desk by those two. It’s nice to sit back and pt the keyboard in my lap and my mouse on the chair next to me. I love it. Yes, you have to replace the batteries now and then, but it’s not difficult. Try them!
They do sell varieties of mice/mouses. I am sure you could find a cute pink wireless one.
I’ve seen some pink wireless mice, and one will likely come home in the near future.