Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 252

Cherry Saturday 7 – 11 – 15

Today is All American Pet Photo Day.

American because the pets in Australia will kill you. (Avoid the Drop Bears.)

Genius Time

I looked at Lavender Blue‘s first act and realized it was 46,244 words long.

That’s too many.

I’m not really that fixated on numbers, but I know that readers are going to need to be turned into a new story long before the halfway point. I’m not sure how long this book is going to be, but 46,000 words is definitely the halfway point or close to it. (It was contracted at 50,000 words, but that ain’t happening). I need the murder at the halfway point, end of Act Two, so really, just no on that length.

So I did what I always do. I made a list of the scenes with their word counts, which showed me that eight of them were really transitions, not scenes (too short, no conflict) and then studied the remaining, twenty-five actual scenes, looking for what I could cut (over 10,000 words had to go which was around four scenes).

But the thing was, I really needed all those scenes. Which left me with one solution: Move the turning point scene in that act up 10,000 words or so. In order to do that, I had to move the scene that incited the turning point scene up, and when I was looking for a place to do that, I realized I could just add the inciting event into an existing scene I had. Then I could take out everything down to the transition into the act climax and the act climax; 9700 words shifted into Act Two, leaving me with around 37,000 words in Act One. (That’s still a little long, but I can nickel-and-dime it down in the rewrite.)

The lovely thing is, I think it actually makes the story better. A dinner-with-Mom scene becomes stronger because it’s the aftermath of a lot of shouting at the act climax. Because the turning point is Liz deciding to stay in town a little longer, it also means she’s a little more resigned to being a fixer again, which fuels a scene in which she protects a little kid with a lot more resonance. It shifts the relationship in a scene at the bachelorette party. It puts the first sex scene in the second act, which is really where it should be to arc the romance plot. And it also shifts a high energy scene that I really like but that I’m not sure of its purpose into that second phase of Liz-in-town arc. (I’ll figure out what it’s doing in there when I have the entire first draft done.)

So not only do I have a tighter first act, I have a better second act.

Sometimes I think I’m an idiot, and other times I’m convinced I’m a genius. Today, it’s Genius Time.

Cherry Saturday 7- 4 -15

Today is National Country Music Day. Ignore the fireworks, and crank up the country singer of your choice. I pick Roseanne Cash. And Terri Clark. And Brad Paisley. And Alabama . . .

Cleaning the Office 1: The Wayback Machine Goes Into the Recycling

So I’m cleaning my office because it’s become a dumping ground, and because I’m combining it with the home office I thought would be such a good idea kept separate (not), and because I need to paint the floor, and because I need to get serious about finishing this book and for that I need a working laser printer. No, there won’t be day-to-day pictures, I did that once before and my office this time it too vile to photograph. This past couple days, I’ve been going through files because really, how much paper do you need stacked around? and I’m finding a lot of stuff from my past. It’s my own Wayback Machine, and some of the stuff I’d forgotten completely, for good reason. Among other things, I found my first feeble attempts at fiction, most of which is now in blue recycling bags, but which showed me a lot about who I was then and how little I knew. (That’s okay, everybody starts someplace.)

I think most readers have casual thoughts about writing their own stories, even if it’s just to fix the dumb mistakes in books they’re reading. Most of my earliest stuff was like that, not seriously pursuing a writing career or even serious about writing, just messing around. And boy howdy was it was derivative. There was my Rex Stout knockoff short story with an older stay-at-home detective (a thin, wheelchair-bound professor) and her smart-mouthed research assistant which was just unpleasant, plus a terrible mystery; after I finished it I still wasn’t sure what had happened. There was the start to my Gothic novel . . . oh, dear, god, was that bad. There was something that I’m not sure I understand–maybe a historical with Irene Adler’s niece?–that was truly terrible. And they were all almost illegible because they were typed. I got my first computer around 1987, so you know this stuff was old. I try not to criticize myself for anything non-harmful I did in the twentieth century because it’s like slanging another person, I was so different then. So this stuff was from somebody who wasn’t taking fiction seriously–well, I was an art teacher, so it wasn’t really in my skill set–and who was just exploring ideas. Still, nothing I want anybody to ever see, so it all went into the recycling bin.

Also sometimes in the late seventies, early eighties, a friend of mine, Sandy Focht, dragged me to a fiction writing course at University of Dayton. Sandy was a lot more focused on writing than I was and she wanted company, and I was curious, so I signed up, too. I have two short stories from that class, and while they’re better, they’re also entirely predictable, nothing worth reading. Still, they didn’t make me cringe, so I stuck them into the folder labeled Wayback Machine. Mollie can throw them out when I’m dead.

The hardest part was reading the old letters I found, letters from before I was a cynical bitch. That Jenny must have been a nice person. They were the kind of thing that made me want to go back to her and say, “Listen, you’ve got some bad stuff coming, but you’ll be okay. Try not to be quite so trusting and believe in yourself more. There’s some amazing stuff coming, too.” She’d have probably smiled and nodded and kept on heading toward that cliff she was about to walk off of, but still.

So I think that’s going to be the worst of the Great Office Clean-up. Now it’s just finishing the bookcases I’m building and getting the laser printer set up (as soon as I find what I did with the damn cord) and clearing off the desk. Oh, and painting the floor, because right now it’s part plywood from where Richie covered over the stairs and it looks like hell. And putting up the shelves over the window. It’ll be awhile.

But at least I got my past into the recycling bin. That’s real progress.

Cherry Saturday 6-27-2015

Today is National Sunglasses Day, which is good, because it’s important to protect your eyes. Also, sunglasses are cool.

(You don’t even want to know what those cost.)

Testing, Testing . . . Sex and Violence

I’ve been fighting with the website trying to get PDFs to load and it’s just not working.

Plan B: Load them here and then link to them. So here’s a very old handout so I can see if linking to it works.

Testing . . .

S&VHandout

Huh. Why does it work here and not on the website? Off to Google.

Testing, Testing . . . Sex and Violence

I’ve been fighting with the website trying to get PDFs to load and it’s just not working.

Plan B: Load the here and then link to them. So here’s a very old handout so I can see if linking to it works.

Testing . . .

S&VHandout

Huh. Why does it work here and not on the website? Off to Google.

Story, Authority, and Sanctuary

I’ve been reading a lot the past few days, which is a switch for me. I spent the winter watching movies and binge-watching TV series, and only this week turned back to the printed page (well, digital page). And it’s just dawned on me tonight–I’ve been half dead since November–that in both film and print, I’ve been anesthetizing myself all this time with story.

I think I realized it first because I just looked up in the middle of a book of short stories (Petrella at Q) and realized that I was completely calm. Calm’s been in short supply around here, achieved previously through a stringent regimen of film and crochet. I know theoretically that the calm is because I’ve been living in another world, one constructed by an author(ity) I trust, in this case Michael Gilbert. I know Gilbert won’t let me down, won’t violate character or do any handwaving over plot holes, and most of all, I know he’ll deliver justice in the end. I’m safe with Michael Gilbert. And Georgette Heyer. And Terry Pratchett, although I still clutch when I think about him gone. These are the world-builders I go to when my own world gets a little shaky on its pins.

Which of course led me back to my own fiction, the stories I’ve been struggling with. And I’m wondering if part of my problem might be that I don’t have the confidence that I used to, that I’m not sure of my authority in the text. The world is changing and I’m withdrawing from it (happily, peacefully), so there’s no chance that I actually know how Young People are going about things now. Of course, there is no One Official Life for Young People; all people are many and varied so there’s not one standard to hit, but there is that willing suspension of disbelief, that sense (again) that there’s an author(ity) in the text. Michael Gilbert wrote about the mid-twentieth century in England, and I trust him. I’m not sure I trust Jennifer Crusie to write about the second decade of the twenty-first with any authority at all, since I’ve looked at it, decided it’s depressing as all hell (the best have lost all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity, and who knew Yeats was a prophet?), and decided to look out over the trees and down to the lake sparkling in the sun and pat a dog.

But I also think it’s possible that if you build your story world with real conviction, no, with real belief in its existence, then maybe that authority is there. I believe that Liv is undead when I watch iZombie, I believe that Vimes is there racing across the pavement to save Sybil from the dragon in Guards, Guards, and I believe that Patrick Petrella will do whatever needs done to keep his part of London safe. It isn’t so much “If you believe in fairies, clap” as it is “If you believe in this world and the characters who walk its streets, relax.” It’s that safe space, that island of meaning in the chaos. I think that’s the baseline for good story, a trip through a world constructed with authority and infused by belief.

The problem lies in achieving that. I think that’s where the strength of series stories lies: the world’s been established, the reader believes in it, the writer believes in it, and everybody can settle in. Doing one-offs every time means establishing a new world, or at least one that’s only marginally connected to the last one. You’re essentially constructing a new society every time, with new characters and new rules, walking new streets, going into new houses, so both you and the reader start on unsteady ground. I think some authors construct their own worlds and then set their stories in them–Dick Francis comes to mind, very few sequels but all his stories set at least peripherally to the world of horse racing–and maybe that’s the answer, that you know when you pick up a book by that author, you’ll be in that world, maybe not a long-established world like Discworld or Hogwarts, but in the kind of world that author constructs. You feel safe because that author wouldn’t build you an unsafe world.

I’m still flailing around this idea, but I’m positive that the success of a story rests on that authority in the text, those safe hands that open the door to the story world, even if it’s a disc-shaped world resting on the back of four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle swimming through space. Which is why I’m going back to Petrella now. If he’s on the beat, I’m safe.

Cherry Saturday 6-20-2015

It’s Ice Cream Soda Day.

You know what to do.

(For the purposed of this celebration, milkshakes may be substituted for sodas.)

And Now for Something Not Depressing . . .

So it’s been weird here. Things happened that I wasn’t expecting. Things I expected to happen didn’t. And there was winter. It all kind of combined into a perfect storm that swamped me into a ocean of depression (which is why I’ve just deleted that horrible depressing post I put up about a month ago.) I’m much better now. Not dead yet. So here are some of the things that have comforted me and helped lift me out of my depression:

Yarn:

I have to stop buying it, but it’s my main pleasure in life right now. Okay, addiction, but still, I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs, I rarely leave the house so I’m spending about ten bucks a month on gas, I’ve given up my passion for shoes and designer clothes, so yarn seems a pretty harmless expenditure to me. Except I have now developed a lust for expensive yarn. The worst is Madelinetosh Prairie (so beautiful). A close second is Wolle’s Color Changing Cotton. Then there’s my longstanding craving for Jojoland Melody and Rhythm. Bernat Boboli Lace. Dream in Color Smooshy with Cashmere. Mini Mochi. Crazy Zauberball.



I have to stop. I have managed to get it all into the living room and out in the open which isn’t good for the yarn but is good for my bank account because I can look up from my computer and see that I definitely do not need more. Except it’s so beautiful. And as weaknesses go, pretty harmless. No, really, I’m going to stop. Soon. In the meantime, I’m crocheting like crazy and it’s wonderfully soothing.

Bandaids. I’ve been cutting myself a lot lately. No, not on purpose. Once dicing onions, once reaching into the silverware rack, not realizing there was a knife in there. And then there’s the various scrapes and punctures I’m inflicting on myself because I’m building things again. So it was time to get more bandaids so I could stash them around the house. Then I tripped over some on Amazon and was startled to see that they make Jesus bandaids.



I mean it makes sense, comfort and protection and all of that. I just can’t imagine having Jesus looking at me all day, given the general direction of my thoughts. He’d have to go out and get drunk by sunset. So I got the monkeys instead.

Power Tools:

The floors in this house need redone. I’ve waffled about what to do about them, tried different quick fixes, but now the time has come to just do it the right way. Hiring somebody to do it is not an option; I’m paying for a fence here shortly and then there’s the septic tank. Doing it myself will undoubtedly result in Not Good Work, but at this point, I just need them done. They’re deplorable. So I bought a Makita orbital sander and it’s made me very happy.



Good tools always do that. I’m currently setting up a workroom where I had planned to put an office and seeing all my tools together in one place, easily accessible, just makes me so happy. Of course, tools also include art stuff like great brushes and heavy duty paper punches and really great colored pencils. Sometimes I just go in there and coo because of all the potential.

Finishing

I have over forty unfinished crochet projects, at least six unfinished books, and a million unfinished or not-started projects for this house. Last week I finished an afghan I’d started early in 2013. It’s gorgeous, I love it, and it’s FINISHED. The thrill of that is inspiring me to finish the other 40 yarn project hanging around and at least some of the cabinetry I need yet, and definitely one of the books. What I really want to do is research Nadine’s book, but I’m slowly talking myself into finishing Liz first. I just want the thrill of completion after a winter of frustration. Also I’m tired of tripping over lumber and half-done cardigans while I try to figure out how to pay for the septic tank. FINISH ALL THE THINGS!



With thanks to Allie Brosh and Hyperbole and a Half, also good for depression.

Dogs:

Wolfie is still hanging in there, but I think he’s really on the downhill slope now. He still gets excited about treats, and he still ambles outside, but the bounce is gone from his bungee. The fence for the side yard goes up in July, and that’ll make life easier for him (no stairs), but he seems to be just slowly settling into a deep sleep, which is not a bad way to go. In the meantime, Milton races around barking and then leaps on my lap to cuddle. Mona climbs up on the pillow beside me and licks my ear. And Veronica–no-thanks-I’ll-just-sit-over-here-away-from-you-people Veronica–now bounces at the base of LaZBoy to come up and snuggle. How people survive without pets I will never understand.

Minions:

The importance of Kevin, Stuart, and Bob to a healthy, stress-free immune system cannot be understated.



I had to watch the first movie again because I needed an example for my turning points lecture, and I have to tell you, I still laugh really hard and cry really hard and then laugh really hard again when I watch it and when I watch Despicable Me 2. So I am all over this minion movie, and I want to be Scarlet Overkill when I grow up. (The movie’s out next month).

Internet

My internet broke Monday night and I managed to fix it last night. By myself. That was a bad twenty-four hours, but now I have internet. And you guys.

I’m also having Deep Thoughts about writing and I’ll be putting up the handouts for my RWA National talks and I want to talk about the books I’ve been reading, so really, I think the depression thing is lifting. I’m still at the “Needs To Do Better” stage, but I am no longer flunking life.

So how’s by you?