Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 172

Working Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Monday I spent the day trying to get a timeline for Earth/Hell which means I did math.  I happen to think math is beautiful unless I’m doing something like this with tables, trying to make two different timelines match.  I think I’ve got it now, but creative it was not.  Last night, I tried to figure out what kind of porn Ranger Rich would have under his bed.  I decided to leave that up to the imagination of the reader since if there’s one thing I do not want to research, it’s porn.  Today, I’m working on the scene where Marvella tries to burn Nita at the stake.  I’m thinking that one might be a bridge too far for readers,, but what the hell, it popped up as part of the process, so I’ll give it a shot.  Thank god I know how this book ends (I’ve written that scene already).  And now back to trying to find all the scenes I’ve lost because I’m sloppy with the doc-naming . . .

What did you do this week?

The post Working Wednesday, November 14, 2018 appeared first on Argh Ink.

Defining Happiness

Happiness is defining your own life. 

Shortly after I got married, my mother came to visit. She looked around my living room and said, “Haven’t you outgrown posters on your walls?” I said, “No, and I’m never going to.” For her, grown-up was framed paintings (not real paintings, prints of paintings, but to her those were paintings). For me, grown-up was putting whatever I damn well wanted on my walls. This battle continued for upwards of sixty years (“Are you going out looking like that?” “Yes.”) until she lost the thread of the conversation, and now as my daughter steps up to take her place (“Mom, you can’t live like this”) I hold on to the one thing I know for sure: This is my life and I get to define it. If I want tomato soup for breakfast, I have tomato soup for breakfast. If I want three rescued dogs, I get three rescued dogs. If I want to live in a slowly disintegrating cottage in the middle of a gorgeous wood on a lake, I get the damn cottage.

The biggest thing I’ve learned about happiness is that you can’t accept anybody else’s definition but your own. People want to define you and your goals to fit their ideas of who you are and how your goals fit into their lives, how what you do reflects them, and that’s understandable. The world is a chaotic place and we all try to sort the different parts of it into a recognizable, unified whole. But people are sloppy, messy creatures, and that’s something to celebrate, the vibrant variety of human race. Our own sloppiness is something to cherish, it’s what makes us us.

So the next time guilt at not living up to somebody else’s standards threatens to ding your happiness, remember, if your ideal relationship is with a whippet borzoi in goggles who drives, that is your goddamn right. Be happy.

The post Defining Happiness appeared first on Argh Ink.

Cherry Saturday, November 10, 2018

Today is Sesame Street Day, a celebration of the kid’s show that debuted on November 10 in 1969.  If you’re not singing, “Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street” right now, you’re Oscar the Grouch.  My fave?  The Count, the guy I think of whenever I have to count something.

One, one manuscript to finish.

And then there’s the music.  This one shows up in my brain every time I find something doesn’t fit.  Like my phone in the refrigerator.

And then, of course, there’s this:

Amazing show.  It’ll be fifty years old next year.  I’m stocking up on cookies now.  (COOKIES!)

The post Cherry Saturday, November 10, 2018 appeared first on Argh Ink.

And a Cast of Thousands

So I’ve got all of Nita blocked out, at least 80% of it written (probably more once I get all the pieces assembled) and then I looked to make sure that all the characters moved through the book, that I didn’t introduce anybody in Act One and then leave them in outer darkness for the rest of the story.

I have more than forty characters with speaking parts in this book.  My usual count is seventeen.  (I don’t know why it’s seventeen, it just always seems to come out to that.)  That doesn’t include the people just milling about in the background, those are all speaking parts with goals and plots lines, demanding my attention.  

That’s bad.

So Nita and Nick stay, obviously.  Button.  Mort and Keres and Mitzi (Nita’s mom) and the Mayor and the two grandmas.  Rab and Jeo. Sandy and Daphne, Mr. Shen, Mr. Alcevedeo, Fenella.  Then there’s the Hell contingent: Belia, Mammon, Max, Thanatos, Moloch, Ashtaroth, Lilith, Sadiel, Mr. Crome, Mr. Praxis, Richiel (only one scene), Phronsie.  The bar contingent: Vinnie, the Hotels.  The cops: Jason, Frank, Captain Mann.  The Pure Island nut jobs: Marvella, Cecily, the two older Witherspoons.   The Devils: Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer.  Jimmy.  Tommy.  Lenny.  The Rev and Daniel.  Dom, the editor of the Demon Island Daily.  And that jerk who’s running Motel Styx and the kid who stabs Nick.

Okay, some of this is worldbuilding, but I’m thinking that’s too many.  Unfortunately, they’re all connected to a subplot; none of them are in the plot wandering around untethered, which means that getting rid of them is going to be a problem.  

So my plan is to push through and finish the truck draft and then look to see who I don’t really need and cut like crazy even though I like those characters.  I have to do something: my plot is looking like my house, so overstuffed with stuff that it’s hard to move through it.

It does make me think fondly of You Again: seventeen people trapped in a house in a snowstorm, nobody coming in or out.  Those were the days.

The post And a Cast of Thousands appeared first on Argh Ink.

Thursday, November 8, 2018

I’m having a fraught week.  Apologizing profusely for the second late post in two days.  I’m reading Krissie’s next book so we can talk about it in Slack–title right now is Thirty-fourth Street Time Warp, but as I explained to her, I keep seeing Tim Curry in a corset, so I’m thinking a change might be in order–and putting together the last of Nita which has spiraled completely out of control, so AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

What are you reading?

The post Thursday, November 8, 2018 appeared first on Argh Ink.

Working Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2018

So I took a shower, took the dogs out, hit the grocery, fed everybody, got through my e-mail which included talking with Krissie about her new book and asking one of my agents if I could postpone a conversation until Monday, talked to my new trash collection people, caught up on the election, sat down to finish reading Krissie’s WiP before starting on the last pass of the truck draft of Nita and realized I hadn’t put up a Working Wednesday post or put the groceries away.  But the point is, I’m working.

What’s up with you?

The post Working Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2018 appeared first on Argh Ink.

Argh Author: Gin Jones, Deadly Thanksgiving Sampler

Gin Jones’s latest book, out on Nov. 6 (today!), is Deadly Thanksgiving Sampler.

Gin says, “Please note that this is the fourth in a series, but I think it can be read as a stand-alone. For those who like to read in order, it starts with Four-Patch of Trouble, then Tree of Life and Death, and then Robbing Peter to Kill Paul. They’re available both individually and as a virtual boxed set: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078XLJ9Q9.

Quilt appraiser Keely Fairchild just wants to have a quiet little Thanksgiving dinner at home with her boyfriend, but as the guest list grows, so do the distractions. First she gets dragged into investigating the theft of miniature quilts that were supposed to be featured in the guild’s entry in the Danger Cove Thanksgiving parade, and then she stumbles onto a bigger mystery: who killed a local quilter and what did her death have to do with a sampler quilt she’d made to depict her life’s story?  If Keely can’t figure it out, her life—and death—may end up depicted in her own DEADLY THANKSGIVING SAMPLER.

Check the book out on Gin’s website;  buy her book on Amazon.

The post Argh Author: Gin Jones, Deadly Thanksgiving Sampler appeared first on Argh Ink.

If You’re American . . .

For the love of God, VOTE. 

The post If You’re American . . . appeared first on Argh Ink.

Happiness is Autumn

Or at least a big pile of leaves.

View this post on Instagram

SOUND ON

Cherry Saturday, Nov. 3, 2018

November is National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo (worst nickname for a group ever), an entire month dedicated to the Butt-in-the-Chair rule.  

Lani Diane Rich’s first book was written during NaNoWriMo (not completely, of course, she’s good, but a finished-book-in-a-month is not for pros) so it can be very helpful.  I plunged into this year’s marathon early, writing a terrible scene that I immediately rejected, reminding myself that what works for some of the people some of the time is not The Only Way To Go.   Then I went to the grocery because I had a sudden craving for tomato soup, and on the way the people in that scene started babbling like loons, so today, I’ll be writing the loon version while having some excellent canned tomato bisque for lunch, with the possibility of cheese sandwiches.  It’s a plan.

Which is really all NaNoWriMo is: a plan.  Well, that and a guilt inducer (you didn’t write 1700 words today?  EVERYBODY ELSE DID).   So NaNoWriMo (really, who thought that nickname was a good idea?) can be helpful since, eventually, we all have to hit those tomato-stained keys.

So are you NaNo-ing?

The post Cherry Saturday, Nov. 3, 2018 appeared first on Argh Ink.