Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Argh Ink

It’s New Year’s Eve. Time to do the Ten Best Books List or the Ten Best Movies List or . . . except I don’t think I had the chance to read ten books this year and I know I didn’t see ten movies. It was, as usual, an insane year, so I and everybody I love and work with have resolved to be calm and steady in 2008, For writers, that a big deal. In keeping with that thought, here’s my ten worst and best of 2007. Listing the ten worst didn’t do a thing for me except depress me, but the ten best was just lovely, so I’m focusing on that in the future. If I were you, I’d do that, too.

Ten Lousy Things about 2007:
(in no particular order)
I still didn’t finish You Again.
Bernie died. A fine, fine dog and a credit to his species. And I wasn’t even here.
My knees went wonky on me.
I didn’t lose thirty pounds. I didn’t lose three pounds, either.
Joss Whedon isn’t going to do Wonder Woman.
I lost my agent.
I cleaned my office and two weeks later it was a pit again.
Everything my government did.
Uhhh . . . okay eight lousy things. After that, I got nothin’.

Ten Good Things About 2007

(Note: Do not expect these to be deep. I don’t do deep.)
(Again, no particular order.)

The Agnes and the Hitman Cover

Pushing Daisies

Collaborating with Lani and Krissie on Dogs and Goddessess

Veronica and Milton

Scrivener and Curio

Amy and Jodi (my new agents)

Music and Lyrics (movie and soundtrack)

Cherry Con

The new They Might Be Giants album, especially “The Mesopotamians.”

My beach skirt

Books. All of them.

Chocolate from England.

Actually, I have so many good things. I’m sitting here looking at the river with four happy dogs on my bed (the cat is in the bathroom because the floor is heated in there and she’s wallowing), I’m almost finished with the first full draft of a great collab book, and I’ve got three great books to work on after that. The sun is shining FOR ONCE, and I have a meeting and then I’m going to the fancy grocery store which means lunch will be really fun (the deli is Satan’s playground). And then I’m coming home to write while puppies chew my shoes, thereby alleviating that nasty I-have-too-many-shoes-for-my-closet problem. And Milton, while refusing paper training, is now bubble-wrap trained. Milton takes his own path, which is as good a plan as any for the new year.

Happy New Year! May your path for 2008 be new, may your ten worst list come up short, and may your ten best list spilleth over into the triple digits. Nothing but good times ahead.

My friend Meg gives amazing presents which is not why she’s my friend but it helps. Meg is the one who, when stuck on Christmas Eve wrapping Christmas presents for the next day and birthday presents for that night for her daughter, ran out of Christmas wrapping and substituted birthday paper by writing “Jesus” under all the Happy Birthday designs. So I opened up her box with fear and longing. Inside was the Ultimate Santana CD and Mrs. Ballard’s Parrots by Arne Svenson. Meg scores again.

Mrs. Ballard’s Parrots is a collection of photographs of Alba Ballard’s parrots, dressed in costumes she made for them, a passion that led to her appearing in Broadway Danny Rose and on Letterman and Saturday Night Live. The pictures are funny (two sailors buying a doll a drink), disturbing (General Patton trapped under his jeep, and worse, General Patton putting the moves on an Army nurse) and evocative of the era in which they were taken (Tiny Tim and Miss Vicky, Freddy the Freeloader, Dean Martin surrounded by Barbies), but they’re also amazing. The parrots aren’t stuffed, they were her pets (at one point she had forty) and she and her family made all the props and backdrops by hand and filmed them in a spare bedroom. The whole idea is mind-boggling–as one Amazon reviewer wrote, “We have owned Zeppo, a Mexican Red Head, for almost thirty years, and I can’t even get him to wear a hat”–but after awhile you forget they’re parrots.

But what I liked best was Svenson’s short piece at the beginning of the book, talking about how he came to have the photos (they were originally sent to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor), how he tracked down Alba Ballard (there were no names on the photos), and what he found out about her life. A lesser man would have snarked; I mean, come on, this is a woman who dressed up parrots and tried to make a show biz career out of it. You’d think the temptation would be overwhelming. Yet he treats her with the respect she deserves, a respect he clearly has for her, and tells her story simply and swiftly, making you want more. And then he gives you more; he turns you over to the photographs and never adds a caption, just lets the work speak for itself.

The pairing of Svenson’s introduction with Ballard’s bizarre and wonderful photos makes a book that gives you a moment in time. It won’t take an hour to read Mrs. Ballard’s Parrots, but for that hour, you’ll be happily in Alba’s world, where a red parrot is the best Quasimodo you ever saw. It’s the perfect book for a guest room which is where mine is going, but you’ll be tempted to read it again, just to see if it’s as bizarre as you remembered.

The Santana CD was excellent, too.

I’m home after a lovely day with my family. Hope your solstice celebration in whatever flavor you savor it was equally good. And as we settle in for a quiet week before 2008 blasts off, here’s a moment of Zen from Milton:

Zen Milton

May your 2008 be warm and loving and happy. Like Milton.

I didn’t get mine out again. They’re beautiful, too. I bought them last year after I lost the ones I didn’t sent out the year before. I’d like to tell you I don’t do it because it wastes trees or something, but the truth is, I love holiday cards. I’m just too disorganized to send the damn things out.

But I love the ones I get. (More guilt.) I don’t know if most of them have dogs on them because I love dogs or because the people I know are dog lovers. I got one from Susan Wiggs that was a beautiful beach scene with “Peace” spelled out in shells. She put a picture of her dog inside. (He’s darling.) Kathleen from Dachshund Rescue sent me a cute card of a Christmas tree filled with animals. There were no dachshunds so she drew one on. I had to look close to tell she’d added it, but it was so much fun.

I love the newsletters, too. I know it’s fashionable to make fun of those, but I love hearing what everybody did. My life is so boring–I wrote, I fed the dogs, I wrote, I fed the dogs, I wrote–so to hear about the places people went and all the things their kids did makes me happy. Susan Elizabeth Phillips has the best one: it’s all pictures with captions.

And then sometimes people send me stuff, and that’s lovely, too, although really you don’t need to. I rip the packages open with great glee, but you don’t need to. My second fave there: both my agencies give to charity instead of sending gifts to their authors. Makes me feel good all over, not just for the charities but also because I was so smart to choose such thoughtful people to work with. My fave because I’m greedy: Lani made me a blue canary night light to put in the outlet by my light switch which just plain makes me happy. And then there’s Milton and Veronica, my gifts to myself that keep on giving. And chewing.

The truth is, the holidays just sneak up on me. I’m not going to get the tree up this year, although I’m determined to do better next year. I’m not much for carols, either, although I do like watching this one. Best Christmas caroler ever was Judy Garland, extremely good for listening to while looking at a lighted Christmas tree in a dark room. (My favorite comment on this video is “I like her nose. I’ve always liked her nose.”) Holiday food is good, but it’s fattening. Plus it’s the end of the year. Time is running out to keep those resolutions I can’t remember I made. Time to look back at all the things I screwed up this year (like my Christmas cards) before looking forward to all the things I’m going to do brilliantly in 2008. Maybe that’s why looking a lighted Christmas tree in a dark room makes me kind of melancholy. Or maybe it’s Judy.

But I want to get those cards out. And a lot of my friends do other holidays besides Christmas so it’s not as if they have to go out now. Next week would be good. If I could find them . . .

Happy holidays to everybody I owe cards to. Next year, I’ll get them out in time, I swear. I think I’ll send them in January.

And especially happy holidays to all Argh readers everywhere. Whatever you’re celebrating, I hope you’re merry and bright and safe and warm and surrounded by those who love you. Especially if those who love you are dogs. Listening to Judy Garland. In the dark under a lighted Christmas tree.

Waiting for the card that never comes.

ARGH.

This is the 12th Day of Shar and I’ve actually gotten a lot done. This is the first time the 12 Days thing actually worked–well, it worked pretty well cleaning my office–and I think it’s collaborating that really makes the difference. As long as we give ourselves lots of space, we can really push ourselves and each other. This past month has been really interesting as a lot of what we’ve been doing is figuring out how we each work, and how that changes within the collaboration. We’re all seat-of-the-pants writers, but Lani and I have really taken to doing one rough and then analyzing the hell out of it. Krissie needs more time with her drafts before we come in with our scalpels but she loves to brainstorm. So a lot of it is just seeing where everything fits. It’s such a good collaboration.

So this was the day that I went through all my Dogs and Goddesses file. There are literally hundreds of them since I’ve been working on this for over a year. Got rid of duplicates, organized the images, recovered all the fragments that are going into the last three acts, wrote more on the scenes, skipping around. Lots done. I’ll definitely have Act 3 done by Dec. 31 and may even have Act 4 done. Now if I can just hold onto this process for Emmeline, I might have a really good year (Bob will keep me moving on Wild Ride, it’s just the solos I get blocked on).

I love this part of the book, when a story that started because it seemed like a fun thing to do suddenly reveals itself to be so much more. This is when things really get crunchy and the rewrite becomes a whole new book. So the last week of 2007 is going to be good times and dogs and goddesses and great friends to write with. Can’t ask for more than that.