According to a recent talk on constructing a story, people like to worry. The goal of the author is to give them something imaginary to worry about - like whether the hero will survive - instead of their taxes.

When people join a writing group, they worry about someone stealing their story, or their ideas.

This never happens. The kind of folks who join writing groups already have more stories and ideas than they can handle.

Nobody ever worries that someone's story will lead to re-organizing their kitchen drawers.

Ooops.

A story I recently critiqued had a character accused of being a Martha Stewart for having adjustable drawer organizers.

I'd never heard of adjustable drawer organizers, so I looked it up, compared the organizer's dimensions to my drawers and concluded that one size fits none.

Years ago, Carol got interlocking boxes to organize the kitchen drawers, but like the adjustable organizers, these are one-size-fits none.

So, I measured the length of all my forks and spoons, wrote a quick little Tcl script draw boxes the appropriate sizes and let me move the little boxes around to design an organizer that fits my silverware and drawer.

I had some leftover birch plywood. An hour with the table-saw and a hot-glue gun, and I've got a custom organizer in the drawer that exactly matches my needs.

Maybe I get too involved in the stories I read.