Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 201

Cherry Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017

Today is Supernatural Day.  No, not the occult, these guys:

I mean, they’re pretty, but they get a whole day?   Okay, they were also funny when they weren’t scaring the hell out of me.  Maybe I should catch up with series . . .

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This Is A Good Book Thursday: JBR

So what’s on your JBR List (Just Been Read)?

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Nita Question: Mom

Okay, here’s something that’s been bothering me: Nita’s mom.  I was swinging really wide in the first drafts, which is what you’re supposed to do, but I think I may have swung too wide on her.  For those of you who remember Mitzi, was she a deal-breaker in believability?  I need her nuts and lethal, but . . .  

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Highly Professional Writer at Work

So I’m rewriting the opening, trying to smooth out the cuts I made, and I realize that Nick is going to have to smite something because it’s referred to over and over again (and because it sets up the Rich scene later).  But I don’t want to add much to the scene and I really like the one-two punch of the hellfire on the palm and then dropping the facade.  So he smites something small in between those, only a second’s action, for a three-beat.  It took me several minutes to figure out what and then to do the research, but I am a professional and I will spend minutes on things if it’s necessary.  Like this:

This is the teddy bear that Nita’s grandpa put in the bar after she gave it to him when she was little.  It’s not great looking, but come on, it’s twenty-five years old.  Also, the one in the bar is really faded.  Its name is Binky.  Nick smites it which causes some bitterness.  (“What the hell did that bear ever do to you?”)

I think this is the one that Nick replaces it with later:

Jennifer Crusie, professional writer since 1993.

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A Stagger Down Memory Lane

I read a lot of my books this week, starting with the first one published.  Somebody had said once that she read her own books when she got stuck on a story (I’m not stuck), and I thought, “Well, why not?”  It was a lot like looking through an old photo album, the writing equivalent of “Look how thin I was in 1993!” but the big takeaway was that the good ones were pretty good although not as good as I remembered, and the bad ones weren’t that bad at all.  Also, I skim my sex scenes when I read, so obviously those weren’t working, at least for me now.  Like any other memory journey, though, it ended up being an analysis of loss and gain.

Loss: I don’t have that fearlessness that I had in the beginning.   I got my structure fairly quickly, Manhunting and Sizzle are the only ones that have no planned structure to speak of, but mostly I was just writing snappy dialogue and internal monologue by people lusting after each other, which was a blast to write.  I was tap dancing so people would throw nickels, which is a very loose, free way to tell a story (that is not a criticism of tap dancing a story).  There was a simplicity there, too, in those early categories: these are books about people falling in love.  Period.   I can’t do that any more, I get bored.  I’m good with the falling-in-love part, it’s just not enough.  Also, some of those sex scenes were ridiculous, and I knew it, and I just didn’t care.  

Gain: So, okay, it’s harder to write now, but it’s more satisfying because I’m doing better work.  I read the early categories and there’s not much there there, but in the SMP books, even the ones I’d like to do over, there’s Stuff there, you can reread later for deeper layers, and I’m happy about that.   I have more editorial freedom now than I did with the  categories, all of which had to be romances; a large part of that is the fact that Jennifer Enderlin is a goddess, which is why I’m never writing another book without her again.  I’ll always gravitate back to romance, but the later stuff is just more complex and more interesting.  And  I learned a lot from the collaborations, especially the collaborations with Bob.  My later stuff is just better generally, although not chronologically.  I once had the insane idea that each book had to better than the last: that way lay madness.  So there are stumbles in there, but nothing I’m ashamed of.  I got smarter about structure and theme, and the writing got more satisfying,  and the stories got better.  So lots of gains.

Future Stuff: Everybody here knows all the different books I have in progress, and I like all of them.  The big problem for me: I am an Old and I am not interested in hitting the streets to see what you young people are up to (“young” being anyone younger than 68).  Example:  I am horrible at texting even though that’s the way most people communicate.  (I e-mail my brother and he doesn’t find the e-mail for days; he texts me and I don’t look at my phone for days.)  Obviously the key is to avoid modernity, but the only way to really do that is to write historicals (never gonna happen) or fantasy (see Paradise Park and Monday Street).  And of course, the brain is aging, too, and that’s going to show up in my work.  So there has to come a time when somebody reads my stuff and tells me kindly to stop.  I just re-read Rex Stout’s last novel, and it was still great, but I remember reading that he asked everybody if it was good because he was in his seventies when he wrote it.  I’m not there yet (not that far off, either) so I really need to be vigilant.  And start setting my stories in the 1990’s which was the last time I dated and when people did not text or do Facebook (I think).  

Conclusion: My plan is to keep writing the best books I possibly can, and when I can see that my best is not very good, stop publishing.  It’s good to take stock every now and then, but it’s better to keep moving ahead until it’s time to sit down with a Diet Coke and watch the dachshunds and the bears in the sunset, proud of the fact that I wrote twenty (?) novels that were pretty good.  That’s a good ending to a good story.

And now back to work.

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Cherry Saturday, Sept. 16, 2017

Today is International Red Panda Day.

Red Pandas are endangered, which is bad, especially since they’re the only ones of their family: they’re not related to pandas, foxes, racoons, or bears, there’s just them, and thanks to depredations to their habitats, there are now less than 10,000 of them in the wild.  Nothing this cute should ever go extinct.  

No, you can’t adopt one and take it home, but you can do this.

Or this.

Or just google “red panda” and squee.  It’s that kind of day.

 

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Mission Amazing

Thank you, Cassini, the little explorer that could.

Launched almost twenty years ago (Oct. 17, 1997), Cassini has been taking pictures of Saturn and its moons (and selfies, evidently) for thirteen years (it takes awhile to get to Saturn).  Its primary mission was completed in June of 2008, but it said, “You know, as long I’m out here,” and kept on sending back information and pictures that revolutionized our understanding of space, thanks to the good work of NASA and the European Space Agency.   NASA has a free e-book of the Saturn System Through the Eyes of Cassini, but my favorite Cassini production is still the Google Doodle.

 

 

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This Is a Good Book Thursday

I’ve been reading like crazy ever since we started this series of posts.  My last binge was Lawrence Block’s Keller series which was interesting and sometimes a little outside of my moral zone (yes, I have one, it’s not extensive but the guy is a hitman).  Now I’m reading some of my categories.  It’s like looking through an old photo album.  The earliest, Manhunting (hate that title), will be 25 next February, so a really old photo album.  

What have you been reading?

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Cherry Saturday, Sept. 9, 2017

Today is National Teddy Bear Day.  

If you live in America, it’s time to get one so you have something to hold onto.  At $14, he’s cheaper than therapy and easier on the psyche than screaming at the news. 

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This is a Good Book To Take Back to School Thursday

Children are back in school and reading.  You should, too.  

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