Jennifer Crusie | Argh Ink | Blog

News Flash: Mona has a new look. Go to LucyMarch.com to check out her summer style. And while you’re there, if you’re a good writer and want to be a better one, check out Lucy’s Story Wonk page. Discovery and revision classes are opening now for June, and she really is a terrific teacher.

And now back to my slacker-i-ness:

So not even close to my 10K goal but still some progress. In my defense, I revised a huge collage presentation for National, read my Rita books, researched diners, worked on the Lavender collage, did two month’s worth of laundry, watched Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, and spent Monday afternoon separating Lucy/Lani from some firefighters. No, really, she has pictures and she’s going to put them up Thursday, I believe.

The good news is that since I have to report them here, I did put on a burst of speed at the end of the week while trying to find tax documents that Mollie’s needed for weeks. So the whole Monday Ticker this is working. Sort of.

Onward and upward in that word count.

Addendum: That damn Lucy March is at just over 30,000 words, and she’s upstairs writing now. Perhaps if I try to catch up. Not that I’m competitive or anything but, you know, just as an incentive . . .

So the copy edit is done, and I’m back working on Lavender’s Blue today, 19976 words and counting:

I’m sure this is going to work. Guilt has always been a strong motivator for me. ARGH.

So Lani showed me this fabulous new writing tool: Ticker Counter. You go to the Ticker Counter website and sign up for a free counter where you can enter the number of words you’ve done each day and track your progress. Why is this a good thing? Because if you put it on your website, say once a week, you’ll know you have to produce or people will throw rocks.

So you can do a ticker like this one:

Or like this one: read more >>

Here are Lani’s collage scrapbook pages for Fairy Tale Lies.

Lani’s story is about Zel and Con:

Here’s Zel’s character page:
read more >>

So I’m starting Liz Danger, and I’m so excited. First person, short narratives, linked together, I love it. So of course I started the collages.

Since there are four Liz books in the series, I wanted to make the four collages work as a series, too. I started with shadow boxes but they were way too small, so I went to square pieces of foam core, no shelf for 3D this time. I was planning on hanging them two up and two down to make a big square, but I may leave them as they are now, leading into one another horizontally, the way the books lead into one another. Except the books access each other, too, so the four square might be better, especially since the last one leads back to the first. So I’ll have to cogitate.

Making the base collage was fun because I was working with the four title colors from Lavender’s Blue, Rest in Pink, Peaches and Screams, and Yellow Brick Roadkill. read more >>