Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 132

This is a Good Book Thursday, March 12, 2020

Last night I wrote the first paragraph of a book I hadn’t started yet, Stealing Nadine. It was like the Lily book, all of sudden I saw it. So I think I’ll be rereading Faking It (Nadine’s debut) once Nita has gone to NYC.

In other news, I’m calling on all Arghers to self-isolate with books and chocolate. No, don’t argue with me, Mom knows best.

So what are you reading until the Apocalypse? (I ask because Tom Hanks has the virus. If God is turning on Hanks, we’re all toast.)

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Working Wednesday, March 11, 2020

I’ve lost track of the days. Yesterday, I was trying to remember if it was Sunday or Monday. Real shock when I checked the top of my computer screen and saw “Tuesday.” But I’m cleaning up the yard so the dogs and I can sit out there–it was GORGEOUS yesterday–and cleaning up the kitchen so I can cook and cleaning up Nita so I can get her out of the house, so this week, I am cleaning. Again.

What’s on your work list?

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Bad Reviews

Amber Share Sometimes I think about some of the bad reviews I’ve gotten on Amazon, and wonder why people picked up the book in the first place. My fave may always be “Well, it’s not Shakespeare” (when did I say, “Buy this book, it’s Elizabethan drama”?) but there will be a new you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me comment along at any moment. That’s why I love Amber Share’s bad-reviews-of-national-parks posters, all taken from actual reviews of parks and which all sound like something Trump would have said.

And it got me to thinking about the isolation/quarantine and the virus in general, wondering what would happen if people reviewed that. Or if they reviewed the campaigns and the election. (My fave election sticker of all time is “Cthulhu for President: Why vote for the lesser evil?” although the one still on my car that will be there until the end of time is “Choose Love: Dogs Against Romney.” I know how to hold a grudge.). Of course the classic bad review is “The food is awful and the portions are too small.”

But I think the artist, Amber Share, said the smartest thing about bad reviews: “If a national park—which is beautiful and incredible and inarguably amazing—is going to have one-star reviews, you also have no chance of pleasing everyone. It’s like—learning to laugh and have a lighthearted mindset about our critics, including the ones in our own heads, who are often the meanest.”

So . . .

Welcome to Temptation: “Would be better with a hunky Indian.”*

Faking It: “This book is irresponsible because she’s too old to have kids. Heroines should be younger.”*

Bet Me: “Where’s the dog?”*

What’s your favorite bad review (as in the review itself is bad)?

In other distractions, last night I went back and read all those Obama-Biden memes. That was a lovely time. Can we please have the Obamas back?

*All actual comments from letters I have received.

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Self-Isolation or A Writer’s Dream Life

Nick Galifianakis for the Washington PostI am in the risk group for the coronavirus–over 65, diabetic, asthmatic, history of CHF–and several places I’ve read recommend self-isolation for that group.

The changes that I would have to make to do that are zero.

I used to kick and scream when they’d ask me to do book tours. “Agents are always asking us to send their writers on tours,” my editor said. “What’s the problem?” “Nobody ever became a writer to meet people,” I told her. Terry Pratchett has a great quote that I thought summed up my life, something about some people being very difficult to imprison. Lock my front door so I can’t get out, and I wouldn’t realize it until Thursday, aka The Day I Have To Talk To People. It’s okay, the people I have to talk to are my therapist and Maria at the pharmacy counter at Walmart, but still, people. On the other hand, it’s the only way to get Diet Coke and bok choy.

So I’m nicely self-isolated with three interesting dogs, more yarn than any one person could use in a lifetime, and the best office for me (MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone, old school graph paper and a thousand fine point Sharpies in a thousand colors, most of them black, all clustered around a bed with a bay window, chocolate, and lots of light), and I realize I’m almost out of Diet Coke. I run on Diet Coke. I know there is nothing in the stuff to fuel me, it’s basically chemicals, carbonation, and water, but I need Diet Coke. I have a back-up of Diet Vernors which is wonderful, but it’s not Diet Coke. (The “diet” part is for the non-sugar, not losing weight; I’ve given up on that.)

I’m going to have to go out to get Diet Coke and therefore risk the coronavirus. It’s really that sad, I’ll risk death to get my DC fix.

Except I don’t actually believe I’ll get it. I’m going to an elementary school basketball game this weekend, so aside from the grocery, that’s the only people-crowd I’ll be in, assuming my grandchildren do not give me the plague, and other than that, the life of a writer (my kind of writer anyway) pretty much precludes getting close enough to other people to inhale germs. We’re not huggers, we’re watchers.

So what I’m wondering is, am I just in denial? Because it goes both ways: give me an article on any disease and I’ll swear I have it. I am so suggestible that last week when I was at the doc’s for a routine check-up, some woman in the waiting room was talking about how people with a cough should wear a mask. I did not have a cough when I arrived, and I did not have a cough when I left, but sitting there in the waiting room under her disapproving eye, I coughed up a lung. So I figure I’m must more likely to assume I have it than to deny it, but the problem is the symptoms–mostly respiratory like shortness of breath–are the same as asthma and allergies, which I have most of the time. I could have it RIGHT NOW . . .

No, I couldn’t. That’s ridiculous.

So how are you all coping? Is it affecting your life at all? Are you wearing masks and waving to people from a distance? Are you wondering if you’ve ended up in a disaster movie full of people looking serious and worried, or have you been wondering that since the election anyway so this is just more of the same? Do you have enough Diet Coke?

Talk to us. We need to know that Argh Nation is safely in lockdown with plenty of food, water, books, and (according to your needs) dogs, yarn, and chocolate. Be careful out there, people. It’s virus-y.

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Happiness is Spring Weather in March

It’s in the fifties here. Amazing what that does for my mood.

What’s your happy this week?

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Cherry Saturday, March 7, 2020

This is Women’s History Month. Just in time for the revolutionary news that a guy will be our next President again. Not that I’m bitter. I didn’t even have a woman candidate I preferred (I prefer somebody who will beat Trump, after that I’m open). I just thought that by now . . .

Happy Women’s History Month!

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This is a Good Book Thursday, March 5, 2020

This week I read about cleaning house, Byzantine art, and murder in Boston. They’re all kind of running together in my mind now. There’s a bizarre train of thought in there.

What’s in your reading past and future?

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Working Wednesday, March 4, 2020

I keep starting crochet projects and then wandering off again. Sort of like with my writing. But at least I’m making stuff. Just not finishing.

Tell me what you did this week. Show me the way to get done.

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The Power of Rewriting

I will be the first to agree that taking over four years to write 100,000 coherent words of fiction seems excessive. Actually I wrote 145,000 words of fiction and only some of it was coherent, which is one of the many reasons why the rewrite is taking so long. But one good thing about taking that long is that I can really gain insight into my characters and my story. The bad thing is that after awhile, the story’s dead and I’m not rewriting, I’m just washing garbage, and I’m about three days away from washing garbage here, but another good thing is that I really love this book. When I finally let it go, it’s going to be the best I can do, which may not be good, but I’ll be proud of it anyway.

The other thing I’m doing this time which is causing me some pain is that I’m cutting entire scenes, but there’s an upside to that, too: it’ll give me outtakes to put on the blog. See, always a silver lining.

If you’re interested in seeing how much a scene can change, I’ve put the first scene up from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 in the WiP section on this blog (see menu above). I wouldn’t read all of those if I were you, but a comparison of 2016 and 2020 is kind of startling. I really do just throw up my first drafts into the computer and clean them up later. Which is why anybody who attached to that throwaway draft of Lily should let go: even if I was going to write it, WHICH I AM NOT, it wouldn’t look anything like that in the end. How much would it change? Go read the first scene from 2016 and then read the current 2020 version. I know there are people who write a scene and that’s it, it’s good. I am not one of them. There’s blood on every semi-colon of my work.

Here’s the first scene page from the WiP’s menu up above. There are five versions of the first scene, but as I said before, I’d skip the middle three and just compare the first and the last. Then in the comments below you can discuss how the hell I ever got published in the first place.

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Happiness is Hints of Spring

Welp, we’ve got a snow squall coming in for the first day of March, and then in the fifties (F) for the rest of the week which I am interpreting as Winter’s last blast followed by Spring sticking her toe into the calendar to test the breezes. We can still get slammed with snow in March but we’ve had a for-the-most-part very mild winter (THANK YOU, WEATHER GODS) and I’m looking forward to the previews-of-coming-attractions warmer week ahead. Spring is my favorite season (in a close tie with Fall, I’m a change junkie) so this makes me very, very happy.

What good stuff blew your way this week?

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