It's not my fault, the Movies tell me so.

This evening, after my writers group meeting I looked around my apartment and I was appalled. No, that should read I am appalled. What a muddle it all is! But now I know its not my fault and I learned this at the movies.

Our local library ran a film series called "A little bit about the Author" every Satuday afternoon this month. The films, Sylvia, The Hours, Shadowlands and Iris, all feaure British writers. My favourite of the four is Iris, and that may be because I admire Dame Judi Dench, in almost anything including the old series As Time Goes By now showing on PBS. But what was striking in all four films, after the acting and the plots, and the deaths (but I'm not going to talk about them) - was the dimness and the sheer squalor of their environments. Of course some of the dimness can be blamed on the British climate, the lack of enough electrical outlets, and the times the films portray. But the unholy messiness they lived in most of the time, well, I think that happened because they were busy writing. The films seemed to stress that.

So, now I have less stress. I know that I won't sink to spectacular depths of untidiness and dirt, because the other parts of my life intrude too often. But, if things get somewhat out-of-hand, I can blame it on my need to write, because the movies told me so.