Jennifer Crusie | Argh Ink | Blog

So moving right along, we got some good work done in Campfire, hammering out some of the inconsistencies, getting the TPs nailed down, talking about characters and setting. Then Bob summarized the notes and posted them there, and I did a setting description complete with photos and posted it there–14.5 MB–and now we’re trying to figure out what scenes we each need in the first act, which is a little easier for me because I have some of them written (working ahead there). And then tomorrow I can’t meet because of the dentist so that’ll give us an extra day to each get another scene written.

Also, Michelle Obama rocks. Thank you.

I just read the comments and immediately googled for “brown recluse spider Ohio.” They are “uncommon” here. Another reason to stay put. I did not google “camel spider,” thank you very much, Amy, but if you have spiders the size of dinner plates over there, you should come home immediately. Tell the military I’ll write you a note.

In other news, life is slapping Bob upside the head this week, so we obviously picked a sucky week to start. I’m just going to have to wait until he gets back to Campfire because we’re still working on the characters, tossing them back and forth while we write them, and we’re miles apart of some of them. So for once, I can’t work ahead. I can, however, go back to Always Kiss Me Goodnight, while I research tarot and try to find pictures of the forty-year-old trailer that Glenda lives in. I want it to be an Airstream, but that might be too small. She raised in a kid in it (our hero) and for the first eight years or so, her husband was there, too. Did Airstream even make a trailer with bedrooms?

I know, Google, Jenny.

Bob’s been tied up with personal matters so we didn’t meet in Campfire today, but he posted his scene, the second scene in the book, for me there and I went through it. Good stuff. Then I went back and looked at my first scene and thought, “Was I on drugs when I wrote that?” and started over. It’s better now. Still not good but better. Then I wrote the third scene and it’s really bad which means tomorrow, after I get Bob’s next scene, I’ll probably throw it out and do something else. Or at least fix it.

In other news, the ugliest spider in the world is crawling around somewhere on my desk. I saw him on the wall, but i have a live-and-let-live deal with everything in the universe except cockroaches (and ants, but only when they’re in my kitchen). So I kept an eye on him and then got caught up in my scene, which is why five minutes later I screamed when he walked across my desk. At least I hope it was him. If not, there are TWO of the suckers.

I’m cleaning this office tomorrow. Bleah.

The biggest thing I realized when I read my first scene again was that I had the worst opening line in the history of openign lines:

Mary Imogen brushed the rosy glaze over the cheeks of the old carved wood clown, marveling all over again at the workmanship.

Really, I must have been brain dead or something. Talk about boring.

The rewrite is this:

There aren’t a lot of epiphanies in amusement parks, if you don’t count the people who get to the top of the Super Screamer Roller Coaster and think, “Wait–,” mostly because there’s too much to see and do and eat for any real soul searching.

I know. Omniscient. About to go into third limited in the next sentence. But still, not good.

Just better than that other disaster.

I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it . . .

Addendum:
It crawled up the wall and I killed it. It was taunting me.
Please God, it did not come from a large family.

There’s this incredibly stubborn spider who lives on my back deck, and he insists on weaving his intricate and enormous web across the doorway. The first couple times I walked through it and then did that hands waving, batting at the hair thing and after that I just kept a paint roller extender (because it was there) by the door and used it to tear down the web every time I went out which was probably three or four times a week. I felt equal parts annoyed and impressed: he could have any place else on the damn deck, there was even another doorway I only used once a millenium but he stuck to the main doorway, bloodied but unbowed.

Sometimes I think that’s what writing is. You build a scene and then you tear it down and come back the next day and build it again. This may be why I now have two versions of Scene Three even though I don’t know what’s in Scene Two. That’s Bob’s scene. So whatever happens to my poor screaming heroine in Scene Two is going to determine where she ends up in Scene Three.

This would be a huge drawback except that I don’t write in chronological order, so I can go on and work on other scenes while I’m waiting for Bob to stop doing historical flashbacks in his WIP (will this man never learn?). Today it was tarot work. There are several tarot readings in WR and of course I have to do them backwards, working out what card I want to fall in each space of the Celtic Cross and then going back to my tarot books to look up what some of the cards mean. It’s fun, which is good because it could be really tedious. And then it occurred to me that maybe M. I. would develop her own spread (as in tarot card layout) so I’m working with that now. None of this is getting a scene written but it will.

And I did take time off tonight to watch Project Runway, possibly my favorite episode ever. The top three were superb, but the runway show in general was just so HAPPY. Yes, I know I was supposed to be writing. But it was PROJECT RUNWAY. Jeez.

And now back to tarot. So far I’ve gotten to go to an amusement park and read up on fortune telling. I like this book.

Yep, busy day.

Bob and I campfired and discovered that our plots had a few places where they didn’t mesh. I could tell he wanted to beat me senseless with my new keyboard, but he’s out on Whidbey so he had to content himself with terseness. Since his usual mode of expression is terse, it lacked impact, but we arrived as some uneasy compromises. A lot of what he said made sense while screwing up my plot, but “makes sense” is the trump card; after he showed me why some of the things I wanted to happen couldn’t happen logically, I caved. And he did the same for me. Compromise: the act that leaves nobody happy but everybody resigned. We’re meeting again on Thursday, only at 5 from now on so that Bob can have mornings to work. I think that puts him in Campfire at 2. And it gives me the whole day to do things like go buy dog food. Which I must do very shortly here.

So now I have to go back and rewrite Scene One again which is okay because I know how to do it. And then I have to write Scene Two.

But first I have to do a Fan Squee. Carolyn Christmas e-mailed me on Ravelry and said she was a fan! Which is so great because I love her patterns; in fact she e-mailed me because I was making her cupcake baby hat over and over. The woman is a goddess in the world of crochet. So that’s left me chuffed, I must say.

And now back to the keyboard. Which now has the command key in the right place, thank you, Deb!

**********

Scene One revised but now it really sucks. It’ll have to do as a placeholder until I get M. I.’s voice in my head and settle into the book a little more. And I have the first rough of Scene Three which also sucks but I figured out something very cool writing it, so I’m happy.

Onward and upward.