Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 258

“Sister Krissie Explains It All” Is Now Explaining It All

Krissie started her 2015 blog on the first and didn’t tell anybody. ARGH. Go over and say hi, and we’ll do the Re-Fab thing there. And now I have to go over there and catch up. She never tells me anything.

So 2015 . . .

And here we are again. Another year’s end, another year beginning, another refusal to make resolutions because I can’t plan for the weekend, let alone a whole year. Instead, I have intentions. I intend to do this stuff. If I don’t do it, hey, I changed my mind. It’s not like I resolved to do this stuff. I didn’t promise the universe anything. There is no obligation and no guilt-inducing salespeople will call. Not even my mother who, when I called to tell her I’d sold my first novel, said, “Well, don’t forget your PhD.” Because you start resolving to do something and Guilt shows up at your door with a list. “Remember when you said you were gonna lose fifteen pounds by 2011? IT’S 2015 AND YOU STILL HAVEN’T LOST THOSE POUNDS.” Yeah, fuck Guilt and his much worst cousin, Shame, something I haven’t been on speaking terms with for forty years.

Where was I?

Right. Intentions. Here are mine:

1. Finish things.

I have over forty crochet projects started and probably about as many things for the house. So I’m going to go through at my own pace and pleasure, and finish the things I’ve started that I still like and frog the rest. Maybe I’ll talk about them on Friday. Finishing Fridays. I kind of like that. It’s not only alliterative, it’s metaphorical because Friday finishes the work week. Not that I have a work week, but you know. Then you guys can come into the comments and talk about what you finished. It might be fun. Just no obligation.

2. Read fiction.

Things have been, uh, hectic the past several years and I’ve gotten out of the habit of reading fiction. Yes, I know, the irony is strong in this one. So I’m going to try to read at least one novel a week. (I read fast.) New, old, whatever. Maybe I’ll talk about the ones I like here. The ones I don’t like, no. No point in talking about books I don’t like since somebody else probably does.

3. Organize.

I have stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. I’ve been organizing for awhile now, but I really need to just jettison some of this. Or at least find a place to put all of it. And there’s there’s my thought processes and my life, those need organized, too. But only in a way that’s fun. No deadlines. No assumptions. Just a little straightening here and there.

4. Paint and Stuff

And not walls this time. I haven’t been an art teacher for thirty years, but I really do want to paint and draw again. And learn a good graphics program, probably Acorn because I’ve been loving that one. And I’d love to learn computer animation in the Terry Gilliam style. There’s a great video he did and I have a book of his, so I really want to learn that. Too much fun.

I think that’s the key to these intentions. They’re all things I’ll enjoy. (Yes, even organizing. I’m a Virgo with Scorpio Rising, so as insane as I am in my public life, my secret soul likes to alphabetize and arrange things according to color.) The problem with resolutions is that the reason you have to resolve to do them is that you don’t want to do them. Nobody ever makes a resolution to gain fifteen pounds by eating chocolate eclairs, it’s always losing weight, cleaning house, Doing More For Others. Intentions, those are things you’re looking forward to. Good intentions. (And now I have “Good Vibrations” in my head. Could be worse.)

Those are my intentions for 2015, a year I fully intent to enjoy to the utmost. So now the important question:

You got any intentions for 2015, Argh People? Remember, ONLY THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BECAUSE YOU’LL ENJOY THEM. And try to keep it clean, okay? Euphemisms are good for keeping the blog not listed as a porn site.

Happy (Insert Holiday of Your Choice Here), Argh People!

Hanukkah was over yesterday, Christmas ends tonight at midnight, Kwanza starts tomorrow, and I’m sure there are other celebrations I’ve missed (Winter Solstice, Deb?) so here’s wishing you all a fabulous whatever and an even more fabulous 2015.

And in the fine old Argh tradition (2010, 2011, 2013) here’s the official Argh Christmas carol. Because the Drifters work for any any day any where, no matter what they’re singing.

Cherry Saturday 12 20 14

It’s Go Caroling Day.

Or, you know, don’t.

Your Moment of Dog: Goldi-Milton

So I was going to wait until the new year to start a new recurring feature–Your Moment of Dog–but then today I was cleaning out the basement for the insulation guys who are coming Friday and heard Milton make this racket. Squirrel, I figure. He has a thing for squirrels. Still, the neighbors would probably appreciate some silence so I go out and yell at him to get up those steps and shut up.

And then I look closer:

This has been Your Moment of Dog.

Addendum: Slight better pictures of bears:

Yes, That’s A Crusie

Poor Micki walked into the buzzsaw when she said the draft I posted didn’t sound like a Crusie yet. So I thought I’d expand on the issue here because what she meant was a perfectly good criticism, she just phrased it in an unfortunate manner. (IT’S OKAY, MICKI.) What that kind of comment almost always means is, “This book isn’t like the book that you wrote before that I like,” and that’s a perfectly good criticism. I’m good with that criticism. “I liked Faking It better than this,” is absolutely valid. “I know you wrote this, but this isn’t your writing” isn’t valid.

Isn’t that kind of picky? What’s the big deal?

The reason I always rebut those comments is that they assume I’ll always be the same writer, and I don’t want that assumption to go unchallenged. “Write another Bet Me.” No. I wrote Bet Me the way I did (over ten years ago) because that was the writer I was then. I’m not that writer now. That’s good. The temptation to keep writing what’s been wildly popular is huge, the money would be fantastic, but that way lies disaster for a writer unless the writer is the kind of writer who really does like writing the same book over and over, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m a big Dick Francis fan because of that. But for those of us with short attention spans who see something shiny, yell “SQUIRREL,” and go over that way, writing the same thing we wrote before is creative death. We’ll never be rich because we can’t establish a brand, but we’ll at least be interesting even as we fail.

This is a battle I fight constantly. When I switched from writing short romances to writing long ones, when I started to collaborate, when I wrote a ghost story with a romantic subplot instead of the other way around, there was ALWAYS somebody who said, “That wasn’t a Crusie.” And every time, I had to come in right away and say, “Yeah, it was. If I wrote it, it’s a Crusie. It might be bad Crusie, but it’s still a Crusie.”

We talk about this in the McD classes: Unless you like writing the same story over and over again–and there’s nothing wrong with that–stay fluid and unpredictable or you will get locked into a brand, into a box that says, “This is what Crusie writes and this is what Crusie sounds like.” One of the weirder drawbacks of that is that it’s easy for people to copy a brand, so I could actually end up not writing Crusies because I’ve changed while somebody else is doing a good imitation of the writer I got imprisoned as. You can see this at work in all the writers who have died but who keep producing work through ghost writers (yep, I see the irony there). They established a brand that will sell no matter who writes the books. They’ve removed the author’s name from the author and made it into something else. Again, if that works for readers, I’m fine with that, but I don’t want that for my work, I don’t want a Crusie to be something that everybody already knows before she opens the book, I want a Crusie to make a reader say, “I wonder what this one’s going to be” as she turns to that first page. So I step in every time somebody says, “That doesn’t sound like a Crusie” and claim my work before conventional wisdom defines me out of it.

If I wrote it, it sounds like a Crusie. I am Crusie, said in the voice of Tony Stark as he throws away his artificial heart thingy at the end of Iron Man III, which was a GREAT movie and not like the first two at all, which is good because although the first one was excellent, the second one had problems, but still, props to the people who made the second one and who said, “Let’s not do the same thing we did the last time” because . . .

If I wrote it, it’s a Crusie.

Cherry Saturday 12-13-1014

Today is Ice Cream Day.

Yes, I know it’s December, but it was either this or Violin Day. Cowgirl up and get your spoon.

Too Much Stuff: Later

Usually the idea is that I rewrite the scene after you all weigh in and we talk about the rewrite, but Toni and I started looking at our two opening scenes last night and realized we were on different planets, so we’re revamping the beginning so we can both get what we need on the page. Which means that by the time we’re done, this is probably going to be the third scene. Or the first. Anyway, back much later, we’re rewriting. And thank you very much for your critiques; they were very helpful.

Toni on Visual Writing

As requested, Toni’s blog post on visual writing is up at her blog, The Misfit Chronicles. It’s terrific, go look.

Yes, Too Much Stuff

So all your comments were right.

I’m going to talk about why the scene was like it was, but none of this should be taken as a rationale for keeping the scene that way. I’m rewriting, I’m changing it (thank you very much for your feedback), the scene has problems and I’m fixing them. It is very tempting to say, “Well, I need this, so this has to be that way,” but that’s a cop-out. This is my book, I can write this any way I want, so trying to justify confusing writing by saying, “But I need to do this” is just another way of saying, “I don’t want to figure out a better way to get what I wanted while still giving the reader a good story.”

So here were my goals:

1. Introduce Cat as the Girl Who Fixes.

If people need something, they go to Cat because Cat not only knows how to get things done, she watches everything all the time.

Clearly that failed, so I’m on it.

2. Get the idea that there’s magic in this world up front.

I did that, but evidently it’s still confusing. I’m okay with people not knowing how Pansy and magic are related (although a couple of people got it YAY) because it’s explained in the very next scene, but I’m still worried about the confusion there.

3. Get Harry in there as Future Hero:

Again, I’m okay that some people didn’t pick up that he’s the One because it’s in Cat’s POV and she doesn’t know. I’m a little worried about that “well-muscled shoulder” bit being romance-speak, but I think she’d notice since she’s patting hard enough to distract him to the right while she’s picking his left hand pocket. And again, people not being sure is not a problem because it’s pretty much nailed in the next three scenes, all of which take place one right after another in the same place: Cat takes the wallet back to Maggie, Cat serves the table Harry’s at, Harry talks to his boss. That’s all within the first 2500 words of the story which is less than a first chapter for me.

So basically, I just had to get Harry on the page acting like a possible hero.

4. Set Monday Street up as location:

This one’s trickier. Monday Street is, as Cat says, in the bad part of the bad part of town, but the restaurant is excellent, so the rich from the North come down slumming. I was thinking of Harlem in thirties without really thinking about it in depth. So there’s a bouncer and Maggie’s lover has a table with his thugs and Maggie is not without special gifts, so there’s very little trouble at the Ear, but smart people arrive by cab at the front door and leave the same way.

I need to make that clearer. I don’t know if I can do it in the first bit, but I have to clear that up. Also, as Toni has pointed out, there’s no description in there. That’s because I hate description, but I agree that a couple of key things have to be in there and they have to be things that Cat would notice even though she’s worked there for twelve years. Four scenes later, I’m in Harry’s POV and he’s the new guy, and I can do better description there, but I think a couple of details will nail that down.

5. Establish the tone and mood:

Actually, I think I have that. I understand people not attaching to liars and thieves, but have you met the Dempseys and the Goodnights? I like the hectic, out-of-bounds feel of the first scene, the idea that this is a world in which anything can happen and Cat will fix it, and that this book is going to be snarky and fairly light but definitely amoral.

BUT I didn’t get Cat right on the page, so I think even though the tone is there, the protagonist isn’t, and that’s deadly.

So the contract I was trying to establish with the reader was:

This is a story about Cat who is driven to fix everything and who lives in a chaotic, colorful, amoral world that has magic as an everyday thing in it, and who is going to fall hard for Harry who is going to fall hard for her, in one of those oh-no-not-you romances. It’ll be a romantic fantasy alternate history with snark and no boundaries.

Obviously, I missed in a few places (g).

Here are your criticisms, boiled down to a list:

The first sentence is chaotic. Too many characters, people have to read several times to understand and some didn’t understand even after several reads. Too much info. Can’t figure out what people are doing. Don’t know who to pay attention to.

Yep. I wanted a first sentence you had to unpack, but not one you had to read three times and still not understand.

Not sure who POV character is, POV character doesn’t drive scene. Not sure what the scene is about.

This one surprised me, but after re-reading, I can absolutely see that’s true. I think because I could see what happens next, I assumed she’d come across as the most active, competent person in the room, but she actually pretty much stands there. Will fix.

(This, by the way, is one of the reasons it’s such a good idea to show JUST your first scene to beta readers. Readers forgive a lot if they find what they want in later scenes, but you really want your first scene to just nail it. This one, clearly, misses.)

Cat’s a thief and a liar, not likable. She reacts instead of acting. She gets lost in the scene.

Two things here: First, Cat’s gonna be a thief all the way through this book so if that’s a deal-breaker, this isn’t the book for you. On the liar part, she actually isn’t. Pansy is doing a wonderful job at what Cat wants her to do; she’s a terrible waitress, but she’s a terrific natural magic damper. Still, I may change that line so she doesn’t come across as a liar although it’s going to come across that way anyway when Pansy goes back to mangle the order at the table.

Second thing: She reacts instead of acting. Yep. Gotta fix that.

Pansy is confusing, much more sympathetic than Cat; if she’s not important, dial her back. Make it clearer that the flames go out because Pansy shows up. Pansy is the clearest character in the opening. Pansy has the only real trouble. The bruise is distracting. Why doesn’t Cat do something about it?

Pansy’s important, has her own subplot.

Cat doesn’t do anything about the bruise because Pansy’s working, the dessert cart is on fire, and she has to pick Harry’s pocket. She does a lot about it later, but I can’t get that in this scene. So do I have her not notice the bruise? Notice the bruise and not think about it but mention it later (which is cheating)? Not sure but I can see why it’s a turn-off for readers, so I think I’ll just delete the bruise. It’s distracting and Cat can see it later.

And yes I definitely have to make Cat stronger here.

Too many characters.

You have no idea. I didn’t mention Rafe, Keely, the Valden assassins, or Phil and his gang, all present also. But yes, I need to release that info in a different way because this is just confusing.

Location is confusing: chafing dish and a bouncer? Defense minister and a bouncer? Don’t understand Monday Street and the Ear.

This is always a huge problem for me because I don’t like description. A few telling details, yet, but stopping a story to describe anything–people, places, emotions, whatever–is like fingernails down a blackboard. Usually I can get the feel for the location in with a couple of words, but this one’s a nightmare: ritzy restaurant in the bad part of town with magic set in an alternate world in 1910. ARGH.

I’ll work harder.

The fire: Deliberate or accidental?

You know, this one I’m okay with. I think I need to make it clearer that the original fire started with the college boys, but then I’m good with leaving the mystery of why it went for the Defense Minister until Toni picks up the story. But definitely, make it clear that the boys started it and Pansy put it out.

Confusion about the pickpocketing: Cat touches him on the right to distract him from the left.

I’m not sure what to do about that since to explain would be clunky. Somebody mentioned that there was equal weight both on Cat patting his shoulder and on her taking the wallet, so maybe I just don’t say that she took the wallet and then in the next scene she gives it to Maggie? Hmmmm. I think that’s a great comment, that the writing gives equal attention to both so why isn’t Harry giving equal attention; the way you put action on the page is the way the people on the page perceive it. Must go back and find out who said that and give props.

The Ear is confusing as a name.

I’m okay with this. I know it looks like a typo, but I want the restaurant to be called Maggie’s Ear (because, that’s why) so I think the reader will just have to run with that one.

College boys: yes or no?

I just need to make it clear they started the fire.

Harry, Potter, and the Defense Minister. Really?

I did not see that. I don’t even think it was subliminal. The Defense Minister belongs to Toni’s plot, I looked up old-fashioned turn of the century guy names and that one jumped out (I love the name Harry, it was my grandpa’s name), and I wanted a low-class simple name for Cat. But ye gods. She’s Cat Gilford now. Harry and the Defense Minister stay, although we may end up giving him a name (TONI????) eventually. (Not my character, not my problem (g).

It doesn’t sound like a Jennifer Crusie.

If I wrote it, it’s a Jennifer Crusie.

So back to the drawing board. Or computer screen. This has all been excellent, thank you very much. As always, I am in your debt. Which doesn’t mean I won’t throw another scene at you later, of course. Hey, you show up here, expect to be exploited.