Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 15

This is a Good Book Thursday, December 26 2024.

Last week I was whining about mysteries I was annoyed with, so I decided to do a brain cleanse with a mystery I love every time I reread it: Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar. Which for some reason reminded me of Dick Francis’s Hot Money, another much loved re-read. And then 10# Penalty and then The Edge, and then Reflex . . . basically I did a Dick Francis binge, and I’m not even fond of horses. I think it has something to do with the way he builds found families, or the way he dissects biological families, or just his way with characters. His antagonists are always absolute bastards, so it’s always satisfying to see them go down at the hands of his good guys. Very satisfying reading week.

So how did you find satisfaction when you read this week?

Working Wednesday, Dec 25, 2024

Yes, I know today is also Christmas for a lot of you, but if there was ever a day that was work, it’s this one. I’m ignoring it except for making chicken and dressing (it’s really the dressing I want, which is really just the delivery system for the gravy). Otherwise I am still shoving furniture around, throwing out half the stuff in this house, and arguing with Bob about the end of HPP, which we are close to. It’s a Christmas miracle.

So what did you do this week?

Happiness is Seven Things

The Washington Post did an article on seven things to do (or not do) to be happy. So I read it for you. You’re welcome (I’m anticipating you doing #1 below because I’m helping you. Which sets me up for #5.).

1. Express gratitude.
Okay, that one works. Every time I thank somebody who’s done something for me, I feel happier. Maybe it’s acknowledging a nice person which improves my view of the world. Anyway, thank people whenever possible.

2. Be more social.
Hey, I’m social. Think how many people I’m talking to in here. Not to mention how many times I answer Bob’s texts (70% of which are “No, you can’t kill that character.”)

3. Act happy (Cheery Boost!):
Play “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.”

4. Increase novelty.
I like this one. That’s why I keep moving furniture and wandering off from the book I’m writing to start a new one. (Not now, of course, I’m working on The Honey Pot Plot right now, Bob.)

5. Help others.
You know, I do get a warm feeling whenever I help somebody. There just aren’t enough people who need help in my life. I’ll have to start tripping people. Or, wait, I could adopt a dog from the animal shelter, and help him/her/them every day!

6. Decrease unpleasant time use.
You know, I already knew that one. For happiness, don’t do things that make you unhappy.

7. Decrease social media use (but not this blog):
Doesn’t that conflict with #2? Oh, that was for people in person. Hmmm. No.

What made you happy this week?

This is a Good Book Thursday, December 19, 2024

This week I read research which, since I can now choose what I’m researching, was a blast: four books on illuminating medieval manuscripts for one of the art crime books we’re doing next year. Gorgeous photos and I got to play with pens and water colors.

I also re-read Gaudy Night, which I remembered as being much better than it was. The basics were there, but my god the woman rambles, and then she did the proposal scene in Latin. Which reminded me that when she wrote the wedding stuff in the next book, she included at letter from Wimsey’s uncle in French. I knew the Latin, but it was still pretentious, and that letter in French was so elitist–you don’t speak French?–then why are you reading my book, you peasant–that I’m just done with Sayers. Allingham still is great, and Christie still works–4:50 from Paddington remains one of my favorite books in any genre, and Rex Stout is still fun (sexist as all hell, but fun, see This Buried Caesar), but Sayers is off my list. I knew you’d want to know.

You know, I don’t mind small stuff that I don’t know in a story, but a key scene or a long letter in a language that my readers don’t know? That’s just rude. My take on the writer/reader relationship is that the writer is inviting the reader into a party, that first page is the open door that the reader looks through to see if she wants to join in, so no esoteric knowledge needed, just come on it and sit down and join the conversation (because I think the reader collaborates with the writer, fills in the white spaces that writer leaves so the reader has room to participate, casts the parts as she sees fits, shapes the story with her own experiences). I want a reader to feel like she belongs in my stories.

Okay, rant over.

So what did you read this week?

Working Wednesday, December 18, 2024

So it occurred to me this week that while it was traditional for me to take the master with the ensuite bathroom and give the smaller bedroom to crafts and guests, it made no sense. The only thing I do in my bedroom is sleep, write, and read. I basically need a bed and an end table. But the craft/guest room has my sewing table and fabric, my work table, my dress form, and my huge drawing board, plus a bed and two side tables and two bookcases. And the light in there comes from one window, so forget good light for painting. The only thing I’d be giving up is the big bathroom, and the small bathroom works just fine except for maybe the shower, and if I want the big shower, all I have to do is walk into the next room. It’s not like I’m going overland. So what I am doing now, is trading bedrooms which is going to include getting rid of furniture and sorting through my clothes as I change closets. It feels a little bit like Alice’s tea party–plates dirty? move down to clean ones–but I’m thinking it’s the smart thing to do. By the end of the week, I’ll be screaming because it’s a big job, but I’m going for it.

What did you work on this week?

Happiness is Organizing Things

Well, if you’re me, happiness is organizing things. I started with my laundry closet that had a shelf full of chaos and bought cheap plastic bins to sort stuff in. I ended up with a boatload of small pieces for collage and egg cups story, so I pulled some old storage drawers out of the garage and sorted everything in there. I put up shelves on both sides of the kitchen door in the garage and made myself a pantry. I still have a lot to do, but here is something incredibly satisfying of putting everything in a place where it belongs.

How did you organize yourself some chaos the week?

This is a Good Book Thursday, December 12, 2024

This week I’ve been reading and thinking about my favorite detectives–Miss Marple, Albert Campion, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, and so on–and I realized I go back to those series because I want to spend time with those people because they’re smart and witty and not evil. I just want to live in a nice place with nice people (which I do in real life, but not in my country as a whole) where the people who lie and cheat end up in jail instead of a White House. But mostly, I just want to hang out with the people again. Doing three book series doesn’t give us a lot of scope for that–it’s very hard to arc a romance over more than three books–but maybe we can find a different approach. It might be nice after creating these detailed worlds to stay in one a little bit longer.

What worlds did you read about this week?

Working Wednesday, December 11, 2024

I’ve been working on making part of my garage into a pantry (a door off the kitchen leads into it), reconfiguring how I store my yarn (I have a lot of yarn), working on The Honey Pot Plot (closer and closer to the end) and talking to Bob about the art crimes books next year. I think one of them should be about an illuminated manuscript (faked, forged, stolen, whatever) because medieval illuminations are fabulous. So I googled and kept sending them to Bob. Like this one:

And this one:

And then Bob sent me this one and labeled it COLLABORATION:

We’re working all the time.

What did you work on this week?

A Day in the Life of a Collaboration

The two questions/suggestions Bob and I get most often are:
1. How do you collaborate?
and
2. You should make your texts into a book.

And the two answers we usually give are
1. Lots of communication, lots of back and forth, occasional arguments, and a lot of wordplay when we get to the point where we can’t write fiction without a break.
and
2. Because the vast majority of our texts are boring as hell to anybody but us.

What I’m thinking now is that it might be better to show what we do which would also explain why nobody would want to read an entire book of our texts. (And it would be a big book. I think Bob figured out we’d written 600,000 words of text to do the Liz/Vince books alone.)

So here’s what we did yesterday (warning, very long post):

Monday, December 9, 2024

That was the part of the monologue I was doing because I knew Bob was asleep in Tennessee, having signed off at 11:19 PM on Sunday night, whereas I was wide awake in Pennsylvania. This actually usually works out well for us.

Then I worked for awhile and then took a nap and came back at 7:25 AM to explain what I’d been doing, and at 8:31 AM, I posted the rewrite of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in The Honey Pot Plot.

Then I signed off at 8:53AM and Bob woke up:

[You begin to see why nobody would want a book of these texts.]

Then we talked about dogs for three minutes, and Pat Gaffney showed up at the Grille for lunch, and I ate and laughed with her in PA while Bob worked in TN.

After lunch, I checked in again.

And I kept talking (texting) and eventually, at 2PM, I noticed I was alone.

And then we discussed the many ways Thursday was messed up because we had different ideas when a major reveal should happen. Until 2:59 PM when we finally drilled down to heart of the problem: we had two different ideas of how Rose would handle a situation.

You know, a major difficulty in collaboration is trying to remember where the hell everybody is and what they’re thinking. Especially if we’ve both wandered off center and so are writing two different Roses. So for another nine minutes, we tried to figure out where everybody was in our different versions, ending with this:

And then we realized we had four vehicles to keep track of.

Then we spent another ten minutes trying to figure out where people and cars and llamas were. Which led to this:

When we start doing that, we’re tired. And I call nap time.

Then we discussed body bags until just after 6PM. At 7:48 I put up a link to an NYT article and ranted about elitism. Bob was somewhere else. At 8:45, I put up rewrite of Chapter 27. At 9:15, I put up my polish of Chapter 30. At 9:41, I put my rewrite of Chapter 32. Bob is not posting rewrites because he has the master doc and is working on that. At 10:40, I asked Bob a question, and at 11:02 PM, he answered me. And at 12:41 this morning (Tuesday) I put up my rewrite of Chapter 34. That was the end of the Thursday rewrites for me, except for one final scene I have to do from scratch. Bob gets that this afternoon.

It’s now 4:26 AM, I have been doing normal human stuff–cleaning out my e-mail in-box, eating, clearing a path to the bathroom (why do I never have time to clean? because I don’t want to clean) and writing this blog post. Bob is probably still blissfully asleep, but will wake at the crack of dawn with some post about Little Melvin before he goes back to work. I’ll wake up about eleven to work on Chapter 36, which will be brilliant, and this whole thing will start over again.

So
1. This is how we collaborate.
2. Never again say, “These texts would make a great book.”

Good night.

Exploiting You: Maybe This Time is $3.99

Hey, Maybe This Time is on sale for $3.99 right now on Amazon. Possibly other places, but that’s the link Bob sent me. Thank you, Bob.