This is what the lower shelf of the unit to my left looks like:
So, what have we got here?
The pile on the left contains stuff to do with screenwriting. There's The Screenwriter's Bible, which was recommended to me by former British Legends player and Los Angeles producer/writer/director Chip Hayes and was pretty well exactly what I needed to get started. Mine's the 1998 version, hmm, I guess I should upgrade it..
There are also several copies of my two completed screenplays and some treatments of them that I paid to have done (on the whole a good idea, in that if I wrote another screenplay I'd pay for some of the people I did before to look over it).
The blue folder is full of printouts of online notes about screenwriting, which I'll go through eventually and purge. There are further research notes underneath, a book about screwball comedies (my chosen genre, which perhaps explains why I have little success in pitching), copies of emails and replies to emails, lists of potential agents, ... The brown box is empty, but is US letter size (as are screenplays) so I use it if I need to carry a screenplay around physically without damaging it. Underneath the box are more screenplays, but I didn't write those — they're for reference.
The middle section of the shelf is where I chuck the receipts of things I've bought that might conceivably break (computers etc.). It's a legacy of the days when I ran MUSE Ltd. and could claim back VAT on things. There are also a couple of hole punches (one for A4, one for US letter size) and hidden under the lot is the manual for the screenwriting software I use, ScriptThing (which became Screenwriter 2000, which became Movie Magic Screenwriter, then I lost track of it).
The right shelf has some smaller screenwriting books. Prominent among them you will see The Complete Idiot's Guide to Screenwriting. I don't usually buy this kind of guide, but I bought that one because I was in email conversation with the author, Skip Press. He fell out with another person I was emailing, Derek Harris (that's what he used for screenwriting, anyway — he never told anyone his real name). Both Skip and Dek asked that I ceased talking to the other, so of course I turned them both down. Dek wasn't pleased, but understood; Skip wasn't pleased, and told me he never wanted me to contact him ever again. I kept my copy of his book, though, because its title is spot on: it really is a complete idiot's guide to screenwriting.
Beneath the screenplay books are my 3D photos, in a box for a 3D photo viewing kit I bought in the USA once. It works, too, although initially not all that well. The pink glasses you can see there are the strongest reading spectacles you can buy off the shelf; if you put those on and then look through the viewer, you get a much easier time of things. Just don't do it when someone else is nearby with a camera, as they look ridiculous on...
Don't worry, there's only one more section of this cupboard to go before I move on to the final set of shelves. Then, you can worry.