Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 121

This is a Good Book Thursday, June 25, 2020

Like apparently everyone else during this time, I am rereading obsessively. And it occurred to me that maybe this week, I could just list my top five favorite rereads of all time, the books I am returning to obsessively for comfort and the joy of reading.

But I’m gonna cheat and count a series as one book. Because it’s my blog, that’s why.

Here in alphabetical order are my top five fave rereads:

Aaronovitch, Ben; the Rivers of London series

Heyer, Georgetts; the Regency novels and contemporary mysteries

McQuiston, Casey; Red, White, and Royal Blue

Pratchett, Terry: the Discworld novels

Wells, Martha; the Murderbot series

Anybody else want to play?

Working Wednesday, June 23, 2020

Yesterday, I ended up with so much on my plate that I forgot to meet Bob in Slack at 5 to talk about character arc. Fortunately, Bob is a pretty laid back guy unless we’re talking about prologues, so he let me off the hook. I still had to get groceries, wrestle the recycling to the curb, try to fix the air conditioner and then get the same air conditioner out of the bedroom, plus the various other things that take up time: cooking, showering, trying to get all the clothes off the floor, yelling at Milton to get his butt out of the road, the usual. I was a little frazzled by the end of the day, but then I looked back and thought, “These are not problems. You have no problems.” Because work is not a problem, it just gets in the way of my reading and writing.

And now it’s late on Wednesday, and I’m rereading Murderbot and Rivers of London, and I have PLENTY of Diet Coke and brioche in rolls (because they didn’t have bread, damn it, and what’s with the lack of bok choy at TWO different groceries? Is bok choy the toilet paper equivalent in the vegetable aisle?), so I’m going to kick back and have dinner before midnight when WaPo puts up the new crossword.

What did you work on this week?

So About Dorothy

We’ve been doing the Heart of the Story discovery stuff on HWSW, and it’s made me rethink Surprise Lily because, as I wrote over there, a story is nothing without a strong antagonist, and of course, as we talked about here, Lily doesn’t have an antagonist.

Except I’d been thinking about Dorothy, Louis’s admin assistant, lurking in the underbrush at the museum. And I love a doppelgänger antagonist, so I thought, “What if Dorothy loves the museum as much as Lily does?” And then to add some more motivation (that’s what I’m writing about now, motivation), what if Dorothy had been in line for directorship (?) (note to self: research how museums work) and Louis had been given the job from the outside because of his connections, and then brought in his nephew Sebastian. Lily would have been upset for her, but they’d have been coping, and then they would have found out what an idiot Louis was. I mean this clearly needs a lot of work but I can see them aligned on that.

Plus once I’d named her Dorothy, I thought she’d keep a stuffed Toto on her desk, so I went to Amazon to see if there were any and found this awful cheap Toto-in-a-Basket that would be perfect for hiding a recording device or a taser. And I kind of fell in love with Dorothy. She’s like a nefarious Cheryl.

Below is my first Dorothy scene. Way too much thinkin’ and info dump, but it’s a start on character exploration. Dorothy might be fun to write, too. And maybe if I throw an antagonist into the plot, the voices will come back. I miss Cheryl.

Dorothy Gage watched Louis Lewis strut down the hall of the admin section of the Children’s Museum, away from her desk in front of his office. The new girl, Jessica, pep-talked along beside him, smiling at him, pretty as a little blonde daisy, if daisies had butts that were high and tight.

Perky, Dorothy thought.

The perky had probably gotten her far, though. It had definitely gotten her into the Museum.

“You’ll like Jessica,” Louis had told her. “She’s very enthusiastic.”

I like Lily, Dorothy had thought, but she’d beamed at Louis. “Oh, how nice.”

She had liked Lily, a lot, but Lily was too damn smart. Lily noticed things. She was definitely going to get Lily back once she was in charge, but for now Lily was best out of the way, recovering from the awful shock of being hit by an ax, which really had been an accident.

Dorothy winced, thinking about it now, and adjusted the small, cheap basket with the stuffed Toto dog on her desk. That made her think of Lily, too. Louis had asked Lily what he should get Dorothy for Christmas, and Lily had said, “She likes the Wizard of Oz,” and Louis had said, “Really, why?” and then cheaped out on this paper thin basket. Fortunately, it had a label that said “Toto” on it. She’d thought at first it was a rat with mange.

But then, fortunately, it had occurred to her that the basket would be a good place to hide recording equipment. Or a tazer. Or a Glock. No not a Glock—

It’s my fault Lily got hurt. No matter how much she tried to forget, she was the one who’d bumped the ax reaching for the same box that Lily and Sebastian had been after. And then Lily had gone down with a dent in her head. Traumatic, that’s what that was. For both of them.

Fortunately, Lily had been so dazed that when Dorothy had whispered, “Sebastian did it.” she’d just blinked at her. She’d been trying to figure out what to do about Lily, maybe send her on a trip somewhere for the museum? But then Sebastian had seen the box Lily was going to open and lunged, and it was most unfortunate and at the same time so fortunate. Six weeks the doctor had said Lily should be out. Plus counseling.

Fortunately, Dorothy knew a wonderful therapist.

She really did feel bad about accidentally axing Lily. Lily was so nice. So competent. So . . . Lily.

But fortunately, Lily was doing fine now, working for her insane cousin, and she looked pretty good these days when Dorothy went into the diner, you could hardly see the dent in her forehead at all.

Of course, putting Lily on the sidelines led to Jessica, but Jessica had fortunately turned out not to know a damn thing about teaching, kids, museum displays, or Vikings, so Dorothy had just incorporated her into her plans to destroy Louis Lewis. “I know Jessica is hopeless,” she’d tell the chairman of the museum board when he looked into the disaster she was about to facilitate. “But Mr. Lewis insisted.”

Really, there was so much good fortune, it was like Fate was telling her that she was doing the right thing.

She patted her stuffed Toto, now looking marginally better after some grooming. Almost like a dog.

Of course, she was doing the right thing.

Louis came back through the atrium doors, looking perturbed.

Louis Lewis, even his name was ridiculous. His mother must have been an idiot to name him that, which was genetically sound: Louis was also an idiot. He’d once been a very good-looking idiot, but he was going to seed now, so looks were not what he was getting by on at present. That would be his connections.

And the thing about connections, Dorothy thought as Louis came toward her, looking like a disturbed turkey, is that they can be severed.

She imagined a giant Viking ax and Louis, all alone. Quivering.

“Dorothy, the waterfall isn’t working.”

Dorothy smiled brightly at Louis. “None of the water in the building is working, Mr. Lewis, the plumbers are flushing the pipes. There are signs on all the restrooms, and I put the memo on your desk. It will be back on at four.” She checked her watch. “Twenty-seven minutes from now.”

“Oh.” Louis blinked at her, his brow furrowed. “Perhaps next time you could mark the important memos, Mrs. Gage. I can’t read everything, you know.”

You don’t read anything, Dorothy thought, but she didn’t say it because the last thing she wanted was Louis Lewis suddenly becoming literate.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Lewis,” she said, properly submissive. “I should have thought of that.”

“I’m sure you will in the future,” he said, smiling at her with superiority that he probably thought was charm.

“Absolutely, Mr. Lewis,” she said as he went through the atrium door.

I am absolutely going to destroy you, she thought, and went back to the concession order Jessica had just given her.

Jessica wanted custom ice cream bars, “Vik-Cream Bars” she called them, ice cream in the shape of ax heads mounted on wooden sticks, which Lily would have vetoed because she would have seen ahead to small children smashing frozen dessert into each other’s hair.

Well, that was going to be a disaster.

Dorothy sighed happily and picked up the phone to order the ice cream.

Really, nothing but good fortune everywhere she looked.

Happiness is Bees

I was outside yesterday, typing away on a gorgeous afternoon, and a bee distracted me. It was just one, and it buzzed in, apparently to see what I was working on, and hung there for a moment, just beautiful, and then it went on its way. I have a yard full of clover, but I don’t see many bees, and that worries me, so seeing this one was aa real charge. And the a couple of days later I read about Matthew Willey, whose mission is to paint 50,000 bees and whose work is beautiful. And that made me happy, too. Plus, there’s honey.

from Atlas Obscura
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles...?

What made you happy this week?

He Wrote She Wrote Again: The Central Conflict

The second new HWSW post is up, and there’s another post after that since Bob and I went off subject to talk about Nita. We’re having a bit of trouble sticking to one topic–this Tuesday we were supposed to be doing character and I started in on Prologues and Bob was the Voice of Reason, and you can imagine how that went.

This week’s post is The Central Conflict.

Next week is Outlining. Yeah, we’re meeting in the middle on that one, too. Maturity. it’s not exciting.

This is a Good Book Thursday, June 18, 2020

I got sucked back into the Rivers of London series when I realized I’d reread Murderbot too many times. Also a fairy tale novel called Thorn, by Intisar Khanani, which was interesting, distant and cool with a great plot adapted from the Goose Girl. It has that epic distance feeling which is usually not my thing, but it was so well-written that I was drawn in anyway.

What story were you drawn into this week?

Working Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Bob and I logged another HWSWA post and I’m still trying to figure out how to make the old blog usable. I’m slicing and dicing the Liz outlines, thinking about Lily, and keeping Nita on the back burner until I can figure out what it all means. Also filling multiple garbage bags because I need the Living room as an office and the kitchen as a kitchen.

What are you up to?

A Word About the Old HWSW Blog Plus a Few Words About Revising Lavender’s Blue

The Old HWSW Blog:

The 2007 He Wrote She Wrote Blog has all the posts and comments. That’s good. They’re all on one page. That’s bad. It’s that way because it’s a rescue site: Mollie just captured the whole blog, put it on one page, and then hid the site from bots since it was essentially an archive. That was a great, efficient way to save the content, but it makes searching for anything a nightmare (whatever you’re looking for is on that one page). I am slowly trying to reconstruct the blog into posts. It’s gonna take awhile. Therefore, if you go to the old HWSW blog in the next weeks, some of it is going to be in posts, and some of it is still going to be in that mammoth page. Everything is there, I swear. I’m just trying to make it easier to access. Slowly.

Revising Lavender’s Blue

I’m also going back to Liz because having done all the Getting Started posts (three) for the new blog (second one will be posted Saturday), I went back and applied them to Lavender’s Blue. That was illuminating. The Getting Started posts are The One Sentence Idea, the Central Conflict, and Outlining, so I tried to put Liz into one sentence, isolate the conflict, and do an act outline. Surprise: It’s all over the place. Is it a romance? Is it a mystery? (This coming Saturday’s Central Conflict post on HWSWA has me talking about the same problem for Nita. This may be a recurring problem in my work (YA THINK?).

Liz’s One Sentence Idea (romance, mystery, what?)

Liz Danger comes back to the hometown she ran from seventeen years before only to meet a cop, who may be her soulmate, and get arrested for murder.

Nope, that’s too all over the place. Back to Protagonist/Antagonist/Goals.

Liz Danger must finish the book she’s ghostwriting in order to be financially secure (for awhile) but is blocked when she goes back to her hometown by (a) meeting a cop who may be her soulmate, (b) getting arrested for murder, and (c) somebody trying to kill her.

That’s still all over the place. So more work on the central idea.

The Conflict Box The easiest box was the mystery. I can’t even do one for the romance because it’s a three-part story. I’m starting to think it’s the mystery, stupid.

Outline

The outline I can do, the book is 75% done. The problem goes back to the one sentence idea: since I’m writing two ideas, two conflicts, two plots, I have to pick a lane. Normally that would be the romance, but since this whole Liz Danger thing was conceived as trilogy, that’s the romance plot. That is, the three books taken together make one romance, outlined as 1. Attraction, 2. Attachment, 3. Commitment, which I supposed means the last one ends in a wedding. They all have concrete endings; that is, at the end of Lavender’s Blue, Liz decided to stay in Birney for several reasons but the big one is Vince, at the end of Rest in Pink, Vince proposes and she says yes; and at the end of Yellow Brick Roadkill, I guess they get married. Not a fan of marriage as an HEA. The thing that most interests me about Rest in Pink is that Liz has to learn how to write a romance novel (and somebody gets murdered and she realizes that Vince is It for her). The only thing I know about Yellow Brick Roadkill is that the climax ties all three books together (not the wedding, that’s probably the resolution) and it’s about Liz helping her best friend with the local high school’s production of The Wiz.

So the big danger here is that I forget that Lavender’s Blue has to be a stand-alone with a clear resolution for not just the mystery but also the romance. Liz has to be in a safe place at the end, not just for the murder but also in her relationship with Vince.

Which means I need a main plot outline for the murder mystery (which is also the story of Liz coming back to town and facing her past, her character arc) and a subplot outline for the romance which will actually be the first third (or so) of the romance arc.

1. Liz comes to Birney (meets Vince when he pulls her over for speeding).

2. Liz agrees to be maid of honor for Lavender, the woman who’s marrying her high school boyfriend (sleeps with Vince)

3. Liz decides to stay and find out who strangled Lavender while she was wearing Liz’s dress (gets involved with Vince as he investigates)

4. Liz fights back when she’s suspected of and arrested for the murder (Vince bails her out, takes her home, Liz trusts him)

5. Liz faces down the killer, reveals identity, almost gets offed (Vince saves her, which annoys the crap out of her).

Resolution: Liz decides to stay in Birney another couple of months because her client is paying her to do (financial security, lots more) (and because of Vince).

(The antagonist is active in all of those, but you know, murder mystery so no spoilers).

So I might actually finish Liz, and I have some great ideas for Rest In Pink, so . . .

Why am I not revising Nita? Because now is not the time for a white woman to write about immigration and race, even symbolically. I have a lot of stuff to finish. This is good. Plus Lily, of course. My days are just packed. Nothing but good times ahead.

Happiness is Comfort Food

You know what made me happy this week? Scalloped potatoes from the grocery fridge case. I’m not allowed anything grainy or crunchy or chewy, but I can have these suckers and if I scare up a protein I can fool myself I’m eating well. (I know, I need better veggies, but did you miss the part about no crunchy or grainy?). I don’t even have to make them, I just rip off the plastic, stick ’em in the microwave for four minutes and find a large spoon.

Oh, and my oldest grandchild turns twelve today. Remember when Callie was born and I put up her baby pictures? Yeah, that was twelve years ago. And she’s amazing.

So what made you happy this week?

He Wrote She Wrote. Again.

And we’re back.

This time, the blog is called He Wrote She Wrote Again, but it’s the same two writers (Bob Mayer and Jenny Crusie) and (mostly) the same topics (see below). We’re just older, and more experienced, and a lot more tired.

The plan is that Bob and I will meet once a week to talk about some writing topic from the past, each of us posting a short (ha) essay in the chat first and then talking about it. Then we’ll edit the transcript and on Saturdays, we’ll put it up as a post on the new blog with links to the old blog. I thought we’d be arguing again, but it turns out we’ve evolved toward each other, so in the first set of posts, we’re not that far apart. (All bets are off when we get to flashbacks and prologues, but that’s not until September.)

Below is our tentative eighteen-week plan:

HE WROTE SHE WROTE AGAIN

GETTING STARTED

June 13, 2020   1.     The One Sentence Idea

June 20, 2020  2.     The Central Question & Conflict Box

June 27, 2020   3.     Outlining

CHARACTER

July 4, 2020     4.     Character: Roles, Goals, Motivations

July 11, 2020   5.     Character Arc

July 15, 2020   6.     Community and Relationships

July 25, 2020 7.     Point of View

STRUCTURE

August 1, 2020 8.  Narrative Structure, Beginnings, Endings

August 8, 2020   9.  Escalation, Expectation, Exposition

August 15, 2020 10.  Subplots

August 22, 2020 11.  Scene Structure

August 29, 2020   12.  Action Scenes: Sex and Violence

UNITY

September 5, 2020  13. Time (flashbacks, flashforwards, prologues, epilogues)

September 12, 2020 14. Setting

September 19, 2020 15. Theme and Unity

EDITING

September 26, 2020 16. Revising (Story Editing, Beta Readers)

October 3, 2020   17. The Editorial Letter, Copy Edits

CONCLUSION

October 10, 2020  18. Being a Writer