My car is a mess. It needs a wash, a good vacuuming, and the
windows should be cleaned.
Recently I finally organized the trunk, which hasn’t been
done thoroughly since I finished moving at the end of April. I cleaned out the
back seat so I could load my break-in-half kayak into my car. That’s as far as
I got, and the last time I even tried to make my car presentable was about two
weeks ago.
A little background might help here: I often
write while driving.
Yes, you read that correctly. I actually write in weird,
slanted, giant letters while keeping my eyes fixed on the road because I am
unwilling to let a good idea get away from me just because I’m cruising along
at 85 mph. I keep several notebooks and writing pads, lots and lots of pens and
pencils, and several Post-It Note pads easily within reach of the steering
wheel.
Well, I did until people started noticing these things.
Struggling with the mess: “Hey, I can’t buckle the belt with
all of these binders stuffed next to the seat.”
Sitting on multiple writing implements: “Geez, just how many
pens do you really need? Do you have stock in Papermate?”
Grabbing a purple Post-It Note that sticks to thigh: “What
the hell does ‘Civil War Riot 1861’ mean?”
Making a face: “Doris Day? Que Sera, Sera? What are you smoking?!”
About two months ago, before I started cleaning out my car and when I was still jaded from the end of the Covid-ravaged school year, I confirmed that my current manuscript du jour may or may not walk the violation line of the U.S. Copyright Fair Use Law. Most of the notes in the car pertained to items that fall into the questionable Fair Use bucket. Of course, a lot of research could discount my concerns, but I remembered gathering up all of the loose notes and . . .
And what? Did I throw them out? Oh, snap. I think I did. I
am pretty certain that in one of my post-work furies I decided that I would
never need that crap again and that the manuscript would never be worth reading
so let’s just junk the whole dang thing. I still have the manuscript, and I’m
still playing with it, but what about the mountains of research scraps?
Friday night I do some more research and discover that, hey,
my notes and concept ideas do not, I repeat, do NOT violate Fair Use Law. This
makes me very happy. It’s near midnight when I make this wonderful discovery.
Life will be better with all of my notes . . .
My notes. My notes? MY NOTES!
I manage to sleep,
despite my unease about the notes. In the course of my previous semi-car-cleaning,
I cannot remember seeing the notes since early June. But I cling to my sole hope:
I have yet to clean out the center console storage. It is the one part of the
car I haven’t touched yet in my organizing. Did I save all of those months of
note-writing, or did I have a knee-jerk reaction (which I have been known to do
but not often) and trash everything?
I am pleased to report that all of my notes are still in the
car, in the center console, shoved under a plastic bag full of paper masks, an
old hairbrush, a half-used spray canister of sunscreen, a collection of plastic
straws when the world was going all-paper and straws disintegrated as soon as
they touched liquid, old sunglasses, and an inordinate collection of restaurant
napkins.
My car still needs a wash, but at least now I have the mess
under control, and, as a bonus, I have uncovered, discovered, and recovered
notes I feared were lost forever. As the hippies say, “WRITE ON!” Or something
like that – I don’t want anyone suing me over Fair Use.
