Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 118

Milton Smith: 2006 -2020

Milton died yesterday after a short but terrible illness.

Milton was joy made flesh, an inspiration for me every day. A master escape artist, he was known to the neighborhood as Houdini, digging through the fence frequently to spread happiness wherever he went. He escaped one day and I found him licking my next door neighbor’s face and making him laugh while he was under his car trying to fix something. He escaped another time and I found him in the arms of another neighbor’s plumber, also getting his face washed, who said, “Aw, I knew he had to belong to somebody,” before he reluctantly gave him back to me. Visitors to my house would often leave with “Thank you for a wonderful time, and I’ll be taking Milton with me.” Life was Milton’s oyster to open and every day was an adventure. A scourge to cats, squirrels, chipmunks, birds, and bears, he was also a master burrower and cuddler who made me laugh every day.

He is survived by his sisters, Veronica and Mona, and his godmother, Krissie Ohlrogge, who was the worst of his attempted dognappers. And me, although I don’t know how I’m going to make it without him.

Milton Smith: The Best Dog Ever.

This is a Good Book Thursday, August 6, 2020

It’s been a rough week here, so a lot of interrupted rereading. I need some new titles.

What have you been reading?

Working Wednesday, August 5, 2020

We’re getting hurricane rain, which is like regular rain except wetter, longer, and wilder. Porn rain. It’s the kind of day to read in bed but I have Things To Do: put the recycling out, do a HWSWA chat with Bob, make schnitzel, wash ten million dishes . . .

What’s on your ToDo list?

Answers on HWSWA

The answers to the questions on HWSWA are up over there:

https://hewroteshewroteagain.wordpres....

Happiness Monday

Because I forgot on Sunday.

How were you happy last week?

Narrative Structure is up over on HWSWA

I still haven’t mastered the links to the old site. I should make Bob do that.

It’s here.

Also Bob and I are still fighting about omniscient translucent.

How Things Occupy Space Matters

I was reading a piece in the NYT about the painter Kerry James Marshall and read this quote from him:

“The picture plane is the site of every action,” Mr. Marshall said. . . . “How things occupy that space,” he added, “matters more than anything.”

I’ve always thought that creative writing, music, and the visual arts shared a language. I taught art for ten years before I switched to teaching writing, and the parallels were obvious. The Marshall quote struck me as a great example of that. The story is the site of every action, the stories that are most reader-participatory are made of action that allows the reader to intuit meaning instead of being told, but it was the “how things occupy that space” that really struck me.

I could give everyone reading this blog five sentences/story events and tell you to make a story of them, and I’d get wildly different stories because of how you each arranged those pieces to occupy the story space. I think that’s one aspect of story-telling that is under-taught: the story space. You have 5,000/25,000/100,000 words of story real estate. How do you subdivide it, what order do you arrange it in? If the most emphasis comes at the end, what must saved for that moment? If the emotional investment comes at the beginning, what must be placed there? What are the important spaces in the narrative? What occupies them?

I try to quantify that with turning points and word counts, and that’s a good crutch for me, but the truth is that looking at a story as a two- or three-dimensional space is more useful than looking at it as a cause-and-effect line. For one thing, a linear story is probably more of a circle than a line, o at least, a curved line that meets itself, Story Ouroboros. For another, important elements lie outside that line, moving in two dimensions and sometimes into three Trying to push story event into a straight line ignores the story space, limits the story space, robs the story space of its possibilities.

Earlier this week, on a completely different train of thought, I ordered a book (paper and everything, not digital, so I could draw all over it) on mapmaking. That desire to see a space drawn out on paper just collided with Marshall’s “things occupying space” and makes me want to draw story maps now, not in lines but in big spaces I can define by action and character. (Back to Curio and mind-mapping, with new intent.)

But mostly I’m just enthralled by Marshall’s work and his philosophies. It’s good to be enthralled again, so thank you, Kerry James Marshall.Kerry James Marshall’s “Black and part Black Birds in America: (Crow, Goldfinch),” 2020. It is one of two new works by the artist that David Zwirner Gallery will put on view this week.Credit…Kerry James Marshall and David Zwirner https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/ar...

This is a Good Book Thursday, July 30, 2020

I’m reading Process Not Perfection, which should probably be the title of my autobiography, and How to Make Handdrawn Maps, and a ton of new romances which is making me think I’m not a romance writer any more, and a ton of old mysteries which are reminding me that stories are about character.

What are you reading?

Working Wednesday, July 28, 2020

I continue to suck as a blogger, so apologies for that. I really am going to get my act together. Soon. Probably.

What did you accomplish this week? (Let me live vicariously.)

Happiness is Getting Simpler

As the quarantine stretches on (and my plague state becomes one of the safer places in the country), I’m finding happiness is getting foggier in its definition . . . and simpler. I’m not sick, nobody I love is sick, everybody I love is being careful, the weather’s lovely, I have enough money to pay my bills, I have books to read and write . . . I’m not getting a damn thing done, but I’ve settled into cocoon-like comfort where Lack of trauma seems like a huge accomplishment. Which makes me wonder how much of this will linger when we’re (will we ever?) be through this and into some kind of normal. I’m pretty sure the new normal will not be like the old because we’ve learned to live simpler lives because we haven’t had a choice.

This week I’m happy I’ve made it through another week. For now, that’s enough.

What made you happy this week?