Jennifer Crusie | Argh Ink | Blog

Today, patience and extreme persistence has paid off for the following TEN fans:

Terri O. in Virginia Beach, VA
Shiloh W. in Colorado Springs, CO
Jennifer P. in Evanston, IL
Kathy S. in Iompoc, CA
Terri G. in Cincinnati, OH
Michelle M. in Shamrock, TX
Rebecca McD. in Zachary, LA
Julie S. in DeKalb, IL
Gina F. in Henrico, VA
and Martha Z. in Waynesboro, VA

Yep, that’s right, we’re giving copies to all ten entrants that signed up before the form expired (FYI, it was set to only take ten entries). After the whole site-crashing snafu, we couldn’t stand the thought of throwing out the last three alternate entries.

25 more books will be given away this week – more info will come from Jenny later on today or tonight (or as soon as we figure out the best way to give ‘em away).

Well, you did it again, Argh People.

Dogs and Goddesses will be #29 on the NYT this Sunday.

The power of the Argh Person knows no limits. And boy do we appreciate it. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

. . . and Happy Hanukkah and Delightful Kwanzaa and whatever else you celebrate.

Me, I’m still celebrating the election. If they could put a bow on the Obamas, that would be the best gift this year. Here’s hoping your holidays, whatever they are, are merry and bright and full of love and hope. And dogs.

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.