Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 151
July 14, 2019
Happiness Abounds
The weather here is freaking gorgeous, the dogs are snoozing, I’m making progress on the house and Nita, and I’m feeling fine. Happiness abounds.
How were you abounded by happiness this week?
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July 13, 2019
Cherry Saturday, July 13, 2019
Today is Embrace your Geekness Day. If that takes too much energy, it’s also French Fries Day. I find it takes me no effort at all to consume French fries, geek or no geek, although I am a fiction geek, so geek it is. And you?
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July 12, 2019
Random Friday
I need to post something insightful for a change, or at least interesting, but it’s taking all my energy just to put up with the normal little stuff I’m dealing with here, so you’re getting random little stuff. You can just skip this post. It has no fiber or vitamins whatsoever, probably because of that bastard, Tom Hiddleston.
It’s early in July, but it’s already in the high eighties. That’s fine, I like the high eighties, but then comes August and oh dear god, we’re gonna broil. Krissie made me buy a swimming pool for the dogs which may be a splendid idea, but given their attitude toward baths and rain, I’m thinking is going to be more of “You’re kidding, right?” experience. Although in August in New Jersey, they may discover a fondness for water after all. Or maybe I’ll fill it and I’ll sit in it.
You may have noticed that every now and then there’s an extra period in. the middle of a. sentence in these posts. It’s because my laptop has developed an independent streak and just puts them in. I try to catch them but sometimes they sneak through, so next week I. go to the Genius Bar and say, “My laptop. is haunted, please fix.” I’m betting it’s because there’s dog hair in there. There’s dog hair everywhere here.
I need to go out for mini peppers, rye bread, and sour cream (three different recipes) but I can’t because I taunted a very dear friend of mine. I. should have known better, her gun has always been swift. I wrote Pat Gaffney yesterday and said, “Do you know we met twenty-three years ago?” And she said, “That’s right, was that NJRW?” and I said, “No, that was at Penn State and you ate my ice cream.” So I get an e-mail minutes later that says, “Stay home tomorrow, you’re getting something in the mail.” I said, “Is it a pony?” and she said, “Yes, it’s name is Clogged Arteries.” So now I have to put off the peppers, et. al, because Clogged Arteries is coming and evidently it shouldn’t sit outside in the upper eighties because it melts. Never taunt Pat Gaffney.
Also never taunt Anne Stuart. I took her with me to my therapist’s last week, and my therapist adored her, of course, and thought we were amazing together (we’ve both been in therapy a long, long time, we know the ropes) and afterward, when we got in the car, Krissie said, “You did something that hurt me the last time we were together.” And I said, “Oh, god, what?” and she said, “When I told you how great I thought Tom Hiddleston is, you told me you’d heard he was a terrible person in real life.” And I knew just what she meant: you tell somebody about something you’re really happy about and they shoot it down unnecessarily and you think, “Why? WHY?” It just sucks. So I apologized for my thoughtlessness because that was just an unnecessary, mean thing for me to do. But then, about an hour later, she was teasing me mercilessly. about something, and I looked at her and said, “Tom Hiddleston is a bastard,” and we both cracked up, and now “Tom Hiddleston is a bastard” is our go-to payback phrase.
I made Sesame Orange Shrimp yesterday, except being short on shrimp, I used chicken. And then I picked up the salt shaker, opened the wrong side, and dumped about a quarter cup of salt in. I just stood there screaming for a moment and then I scooped out as much of it as I could and tasted it. Salty. Not inedible salty, but still salty, and of course as a heart patient, sodium is Not Good For Me. So I dumped in the last of the chicken broth and another half cup of wild rice and more mushrooms and squeezed in another half orange (juice of) and a glop of apricot preserves and stirred like a madwoman, and that did it. The stuff is really good. But I’m putting tape on the side of the shaker that is not a shaker. That was almost as a bad as the time I absent-mindedly dumped a huge pot of stock and kept the vegetables and bones. Pay ATTENTION, Jenny.
Today I am going to be savage with Act Two. Savage, I tell you. Huge chunks of it must go. Like sixty pages. I can do this. And then, once the pony gets here, I’ll go out for the peppers, rye bread, and sour cream and sock myself in to cook and cut and clean for the weekend, while trying to placate the dogs who are upset about Carl leaving for three days and taking Jackson with him so there are no walk-to-Carl’s-for-treats-and-smelling-Jackson’s-turf-excursions at two o’clock every afternoon.
I’m really getting sick of stopping to take out those damn random periods. I blame that bastard, Tom. Hiddleston.
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July 11, 2019
This is a Good Book Thursday, July 11, 2019
Haven’t been reading much except recipes and my own rewrite of Nita, but I’m sure you all have been ripping through your summer reading. What’s new? Or old worth rereading? Share the wealth, people.
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This is a good book Thursday, July 11, 2019
Haven’t been reading much except recipes and my own rewrite of Nita, but I’m sure you all have been ripping through your summer reading. What’s new? Or old worth rereading? Share the wealth, people.
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July 10, 2019
Working Wednesday, July 10, 2019
I have managed to cut 1500 words from Act One. I needed. to cut 4000, but I am NOT reading that damn act again.
GRRR.
Now to finish cutting Act Two. I only have to get rid of 15,000 words there.
What are you doing?
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July 7, 2019
Happiness Sunday
I had a great five-day visit with Krissie and a great MRI report, and then I went back to work on Nita and thought, “You. know, this is good stuff.” I’m happy.
What made you happy this week?
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July 6, 2019
Cherry Saturday, July 6, 2019
We’re halfway through 2019. I wanted to have accomplished so much more. Oh, well.
July is Ice Cream Month. I plan on celebrating lavishly. You?
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July 5, 2019
The Nita Posts
I’ve been working on Nita for three years. Over two hundred posts on just about everything as I struggled with the story, first as just a game and then as a serious book. The posts below are organized as to topic and in chronological order after that, but they’re all over the place because the story shifted over the years. It’ll take me awhile to get all the titles (over 260) and links up, but here’s the list so far:
Discovery and Drafting
Maybe I Should Retire
This Book is Going to Hell
Title Search
WiP Thinking
Listening to Nita
Nita’s Soundtrack
The Lemmon McMansion
Character
Nita’s Character and the. Big Picture
Nita’s Mom
Mammon and Max (and Button)
The Historical Society
Plot and Structure
Revising Scene By Beats
Catching Up: Set-up and Scene Sequence
Bookending Nita
Structure. and. Nita’s. First Act
Nita’s First Act Truck Draft: Escalation
Nita’s First Act Truck Draft: Pacing
Nita’s First Scene, One More Time, Again, Oh God When Will It End?
Critique and Rewriting
Critique Practice The Second Nick Scene
The Reason You Wait Twenty-Four Hours
Using Critiques to Rewrite
Nita’s Punch List
Nita, A Progress Report
Cutting Nita: Act One
Nita Critique Thoughts
Publishing
Blurb Nita
Nita is in New York
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July 4, 2019
This is a Good Book Thursday
It’s also the Fourth of July, which is an insane holiday in the US when people injure themselves with fireworks. and grills and hold parades and yell “We won!” about an event that happened a couple of centuries ago. The best thing to do on the Fourth? Stay home with a cold drink and a good book. In my case, it’s a blog–I’m still reading and revising. my way through 2000+ posts–but you do you.
Whatcha reading?
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