J. and I got together in Knoxville, TN to try a one-pass editing of the first draft of our latest work-in-project, which we've cleverly been calling "Super" for months. Catchy, right?

So here's the trip summary from one tired, but very happy cowriter. Pictures coming soon.


Day 1:
I begin the five-and-a-half hour drive from Indiana with optimism, thinking it can't possibly be that bad. My college was more than four hours away, and I continued making visits up there after I graduated, so it won't be too bad, right? At the three-ish hour mark, my rear end started to rebel, and I began to mentally design cars in which you could stand up. J. and I make multiple phone calls to one another extolling the idiocies of our fellow road warriors.

J. makes it to the hotel just minutes before I do, which gives her the opportunity to watch me make a wrong turn into the gas station beside the hotel while my Garmin calmly states "Recalculating" over and over again as though I am an idiot. We check into the hotel, then begin to load ourselves down with as many bags as possible. Four steps from my car, I drop a bottle of wine on the asphalt, resulting in a winegeyser. When I look down to see what has happened, another bottle slides from the bag, presumably wishing to "pour one out" for his fallen brother.

Red wine, blackberry wine (sob) and glass litter the parking lot.

The rest of the evening fared a little better, with a side trip to the Dollar Store to by red pens for the editing process and OxyClean. RIP Billy Mays.

We grab a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant, sketch out plans for our next work-in-progress, and then call it a night.

Day 2:
We sleep in, and after breakfast begin the process of going through the first draft page by page. We don't make it very far when we cry uncle and take a break for lunch that turns into lunch, shopping, and a viewing of The Proposal. It was the distraction we needed. We came back to the hotel and made it through the bulk of the draft, pausing only to order pizza and wrestle with the remaining bottle of wine. Did I mention I didn't bring a corkscrew? J. digs half the cork out with my pocketknife, then I shove the rest of the cork into the bottle, liberally dousing my cleavage with white wine. By now, J. and I have accidentally parlayed "Yul Brenner" into some sort of euphemism for the male member, and cannot stop bringing it up at odd moments and laughing. I blame her.

Day 3:
We're into serious business now. We grab breakfast, then delve back into the manuscript, realizing our characters do so much grinning that it seems as if our entire novel is doused in nitrous oxide. I consider suggesting Jokers in Love as an alternate title, but do not. Leftover pizza for lunch, and then the process of editing everything we've marked down. Somewhere in here, the hotel's free wifi connection starts to spew pea soup and rotate 360 degrees, so we decide a trip to Outback is in order.

A word to the wise: do not eat and drink as much as we did. Editing was put on nap delay as we wondered aloud what we were thinking. When we awoke, the wifi connection (which we are using to send edits back and forth instead of physically passing one computer back and forth) was still temperamental, and language barriers prevented us from finding any real solutions to the problem.

Frustrated, we go to bed and stay up talking in the dark.

Day 4:
By now, the hotel room is looking like a war zone. I refuse to think about the number of calories consumed or left strewn in bags and boxes about the room. We decide we should actually get some fresh air and sunshine, and go to the Knoxville Museum of Art, but more importantly, the chocolate factory that was right next door to the museum. The biggest pleasant surprise was that the furniture display in the museum was OUT OF THIS WORLD. Beautiful stuff, marred only by the (understandable) fact that you can't touch it. Museum is followed by chocolate purchase is followed by a trip to Market Square in downtown Knoxville, where we ate at an outdoor table at a lovely Asian fusion restaurant called Koi. Their crab won tons = the food version of my one true love. We grab some ice cream, then head back to the hotel.

Here's where I decide to take some pictures of the war zone. We are now set up on the same bed, trying to get the most out of what meager signal we can find in the room for the computers, and there are papers strewn everywhere.

We stayed up until after midnight, battling stubborn characters, fantastic rewrites, crappy wifi, Skittles, Hot Tamales, in-jokes formed over the space of a few days, and the knowledge that the next morning would be our last day in the same zip code for another year. (I'm not saying any more about that, or I will get weepy.)

Day 5:
Packing, breakfast, rapid-fire jokes that make very little sense without the context of the week. Then, in the quiet of the few minutes we have before leaving, we sketch out a few more quick ideas, change around our timeline, and then part ways, only to still be working with the changes we implemented on our manuscript several days later.

Everyone should be so lucky to have such a vacation.

I started thinking about vanity plates the other day, and how part of me really wants to shell out the money to have vanity plates that say ka mai. For those of you who are Stephen King fans, you'll know that as "fools of fate," more or less. It's what I see myself as, in a way, a woman who can laugh at most anything, and it's kept me sane more than once.

I need all the sanity I can get, especially since writing seems to have chosen me as one of its victims. I need to be able to laugh at my muse now and again, or she'll be the death of me.

Regardless, I got to thinking about fate's fools and for some reason, one thing led to another, and I began to consider the things I have learned from sci-fi books and shows and fantasy books and shows. I won't attribute them to anything in particular, because I don't want to spoil anyone, but I feel these are valuable life lessons.

1. Werewolves and funny guys (sometimes a combination of both) always get the raw end of the deal.

2. 50% of vampires with souls are boring (and use nancyboy hair gel).

3. Always beware of extremely good-looking and interested women. They're probably evil.

4. Aliens are usually just misunderstood. Or something.

5. Men with weapons are sexy. Women with weapons are extra sexy.

6. Fighting is best done in gauzy skirts and teensy tops. Preferably with the coolest platforms or high heels ever.

7. If you are not the Chosen One, you just don't understand. Nor will you ever. Please do not strain yourself unduly while trying to understand.

I'm sure there are more, but those are clearly the most important.


- A.