Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Argh Ink

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!

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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.

So now that I’m back to writing every second of my life, I’ve moved back into my old office which is a disaster area since we threw stuff in here during the remodel. Like two flamingos. And my SAD light. And a lot of boxes.

Also, I have a new keyboard, the das keyboard, which is very cool because it makes this great retro clicking sound like a real typewriter and which also has no letters on the keys. Yes, all the keys are blank. According to the Das people, your typing times improve radically because you can’t stop to look. Not to mention how cool the all-black keyboard is. Another plus: I won’t wear the letters off. Not so much of a plus: The command key is in a different place which is just ANNOYING.

And then there’s the book. I worked on the first scene. It still sucks. Didn’t get to the second scene. So now it’s back to the first scene as I step over boxes to get to my new keyboard. At least, that was Sunday. What did I do Monday? Well the day isn’t over yet and I’m determined to get that first scene nailed down, but basically, it was a gorgeous, gorgeous day here, so we spent a lot of it outside. The dogs dug in the mulch and I painted chairs and then we sat back and watched the river go by. I can’t do that too often but every time I do, I get healthier, I swear.

And now back to the @#$%%^&* first scene.

We were only in Campfire for an hour, but we got a lot done, mostly resolving the differences in our plots. Bob got exasperated and so did I (couldn’t he see my brilliance?) but we figured the plot out, at least the general structure and the first act, so now the ball’s in my court: rewriting the first scene.

And then he said, “Let’s meet again Tuesday.” Tuesday? Huh. Okay.

So I will be writing my first act scenes between now and then. Trying to do a scene a day, just getting the rough down. Starting now . . . well, after my nap.

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I’m sure I’ve said this before, but first scenes are a bitch. The reader knows nothing and has to be clued into everything without any anvilicious infodump in the course of the regular conflict of the scene. And after you’ve struggled with it for hours, days, weeks, you end up changing it because the first scene is the scene you write last; you don’t really know what it’s about until you see how the book turns out since the first scene really introduces the climax.

If that makes sense.

But I like this new first scene much better. It helps to have been thinking about this for literally months, too, but it’s more interesting and a lot less twee, which is always good. (I think it’s always good, in a book full of outrageous characters, to have the central figures fairly sane and not nearly as colorful. And if there’s one thing this book is chock full of, it’s Colorful.) What the scene desperately needs now is structure, a logical build of conflict. It’s sort of all over the place like any first draft, but Bob has to play the next scene off of this one so . . .

Back to the keyboard.

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So I’m trying something new in the interests of speed. I did a table in Word (yes, I’ve been writing with Bob too long, I’m doing tables, but at least they’re not in Excel) that had six rows across and eight rows down.
I skipped the first cell and wrote in the names of the five characters in the scene in the order they appeared:

M.I. Glenda Maga Dave Ray

Then in the first column, I wrote:

Goal
Beat 1
2
3
4
5
6

Then I filled in the blanks to see how the characters’ attempts to get their goals escalated with each beat. It’s not quite there yet, but I’ll sleep on it and have it tomorrow and then I’ll rewrite it and do the next scene, the best friend scene in the ice cream parlor. The ice cream parlor was probably not a great move for me since I end up eating whatever I put in the book, but so few amusement parks have a salad bar . . .

Onward undaunted. Even if I am working alone until Tuesday. Sheesh.

Well, I’m feeling shame-faced here. I’ve been blundering around in this blog without a plan for months, and you still stick up for me. I am not worthy. (No, Bob, not you, I’m worthy of you.) And I shouldn’t have hung Mollie out to dry; she just ADVISED me that it was a bad idea to post in the comments, she didn’t actually shriek at me. She wanted to shriek, but she’s a lady. Unlike her mother. So I’m going to try to keep this a little more focused and a little less rambling and see if I can’t do better by you all. There may be some long blank stretches in the future, but not for the next twelve days, because tomorrow at 11 AM PT, 1 PM ET, Bob and I will be meeting in Campfire to begin a new experiment–well, new for us– on focused collaboration. Or “Pedal To The Metal and Don’t Look Down, for Two.”

But first a word about Campfire (http://www.campfirenow.com/). Campfire is basically a private chat room service, IMing for groups. You create a room, invite only the people in your group (that would be Bob and I), and set a time to meet. It allows you to upload images to illustrate what you’re talking about, share files (wonderful for trading drafts), and keep a transcript of all your talks. I use it a lot, so I pay the monthly fee for more space and no ads, but you can use it for free if you don’t mind the ads popping up. If you’re collaborating or discussing anything in a group, you should check out Campfire.

But back to faster-than-a-speeding-bullet collaboration. Krissie, Lani, and I tried it last November and December for D&G and it worked out well although by the end of it we were sick of the book and sick of each other. Fortunately a couple of weeks later the feeling had passed, but while you’re in the middle of it, writing frantically on a collaboration just makes everybody feel driven and toward the end, hostile. So of course, Bob and I are going to try it. Because we don’t have enough things to fight about already. This morning (Friday) we sent each other our outlines for the book along with other notes, just to make sure we were both still writing the same book. Evidently we weren’t since there weren’t a lot of similarities, but Bob says, “We can work this out.” Which usually means, “I’ll pretend to agree with you and then shift the plot back where I want it when you’re not looking,” but after two books, I’ve got his number. And I’ve already written scenes. That makes my plot real while his is theoretical.

So tomorrow will be Day One of Wild Ride (even though we’ve been working on it sporadically all along) and we’ll go to Campfire and fight out our differences in the plot, and I’ll scrap my third version of the first scene and start all over again, but that’s all right because I know where I’m going. For once in my life, I have a book planned out. Well, my half of it. I’ll let you know tomorrow if Bob survives his first Campfire. He refuses to IM with me because he says he needs time to think, but I can’t take another 46 e-mails a day, all with “Hey” in the subject line followed by a two word message. We’re going to Campfire.

Bob will be complaining about that on his blog next Tuesday.