SHE WROTE: The Ox and The Dachshund

So we’re right back in the same fix we were with Lucy: We are such opposites that it’s like yoking an ox and dachshund together and telling them to get that wagon of good stuff to Dubuque by morning. (Yeah, I love that commercial, too. The download is at http://www.hotdogblog.com/modules/wfdownloads/viewcat.php?list=S. The page says it's moved, but the link for "I Ordered 200 Oxen" is at the bottom.)

Fortunately the ox has a lot of patience.

Bob outlines, starts at the beginning, keeps writing until he gets to the end. So when we start a book, he writes his stuff, sends it to me, and then harasses me with “Book done yet?”e-mails until I send him my stuff. Sometimes he forgets and sends me that e-mail when he has the book, but mostly it’s to make me get the stuff down on paper. And drive me crazy.

Meeanwhile, I think about the story, make a collage, write snippets of dialogue, listen to music, stare into space, try to block out emotional arcs on the white board, write a scene, decide it’s not right, take it out, write another scene, and try to ignore the “book done yet” e-mails.

There’s a reason he wrote two books while we were writing Don’t Look Down and I only wrote Don’t Look Down.

So we’re on Agnes and I’m finally getting her in my mind, I can hear her voice, don’t quite have Shane yet, but that’ll come, and I’m still staring at the white board thinking, “I don’t get it.” Just as Bob has to know what happens next (thus the outline), I have to know who they are and why they’re doing things, and who’s pushing who, and how their real lives are going in the background. It’s the reason DLD came out so rich, I think, because both approaches are in there, but it’s hell for both of us which is why we tend to be very, very kind to each other about the book. We never yell about the book. Well, Bob gets exasperated some times but he tries to hide it. It’s hard for him when I say, “I just don’t have it yet” because his natural response is “Well, GET IT, we got a book to write.”

So he’s going to want the book back tomorrow and I still don’t have it yet. I have the first scene (again, but this time with cole slaw) and I know Agnes’s emotional arc, but I can’t figure out her external plot. Bob of course knows Shane’s external plot, but ask him about the emotional arc and he’ll say, “Ark? What ark? It’s raining?” Which I know from experience.

So today I have to move beyond cole slaw and get this sucker down because he’s in the air right now, heading home, and I’m gonna get a “book done yet?” e-mail as soon as he lands.

No, Bob, the book isn’t done yet. But it's raining, so go build Shane an arc.