Is it THE END for the Lisas?

Word up people: The Lisas are finished, kaput, done for.

Done writing that is! Woot! Give it up for The Lisas! We finally penned the long-awaited words “The End” on our work in progress (WIP) now completed manuscript.

Well, sort of. There are of course a million and one re-writes, changes and edits still to be done, but nobody can deny that we have a genuine novel, for better or for worse. So while the word count will continue to change as we “tweak” and polish and wrestle – no Jello wrestling (you’re welcome), we offer you, our loyal blog fans, a contest opportunity complete with a marvelous prize.

Hand-knit Cup Cozy

Just tell us what you think our “final” word count is, as of Nov. 19, 2009 9:14 a.m., and whoever comes closest will be shipped this hand-knit, reusable, eco-friendly Cup Cozy to help you handle your favorite hot or cold beverage in style. This prize is an homage to our Will Steal For Shoes protagonist, Mary, who is a certified java junkie.

We will even give you a big hint, the “final” word count is somewhere between 55,000 and 85,000 words. To enter this contest simply make your guess in the comment section of this post and make sure your email address is included or attached so that if you are the winner we can contact you for a mailing address to send out the Cup Cozy. The contest will end and a winner will be announced on December 1, 2009, so please stay tuned!

Mistresses of All We Survey

Take our fun and informative survey! Learn more about the Lisas and their epic work. You know you want to!

If you don’t like the answers we’ve provided, feel free to make up your own.

Next week: a contest! We haven’t figured it all out yet. But there will be a prize, so stay tuned.

Solitary Confinement ( or We’re Having Fun …Yet)

L.A.: Writing is a solitary act. Even when writing with a partner as I do. And for many years, it was something I did alone and kept to myself. I don’t think there were more than a dozen people who knew of my literary attempts. Sharing this information about myself is still a bit unnerving to me. I sometimes think it would have been less exposing if I had decided to moon the people driving on I-94. The motorists on I-94 should all be grateful I decided to reveal my inner self instead.

B.O.L.: Due to a happy fortune cookie accident, I inherited a rare form of synesthesia. I have a never ending supply of (mostly amazing) story lines that wiggle around in my lemon Jell-O flavor brain. Lemon and lime alternate as flavors of the day, along with some cranberry concoction that makes an occasional appearance around the holidays – well worth the wait. Please try not to let my juicy brain distract you, although it’s understandable to be jealous. Anyway, I merrily jiggle on about my delightful, as always fat-free ideas to anyone who will listen. Lisa has no clue how many people to whom I blathered to about our first project, Traxter Baxter: The Curse of the Snithisser, not to mention the countless others I have assured Will Steal for Shoes is already on its way to the best seller list. Heck, I have no idea how many people I’ve accosted either, but trust me, plenty. *disclaimer: no Jell-O was harmed in the actual making of my brain.

LA: A lot of people want to become authors. Many of us have an unpublished manuscript hiding in a sock drawer or on an old floppy disk somewhere. Not many people succeed at becoming published authors. This means our blog could be trumpeting a huge personal failure to the world–should they care to look.

B.O.L.: I am totally unconcerned. I’ve maintained all along that I have “fear of success” issues. Fortunately, both of us will be thrilled to finish a manuscript, let alone get published. Of equal encouragement, I have no doubt that we will be published. I’m willing to pimp Lisa out if that’s what it takes to make it happen. She will thank me in the end. Perhaps that is a poor choice of words.

LA: What I do with my end is my own business. I will not thank the BOL (Body Odor Lisa? Big Old Lisa? Bouncy Oozy Lisa? Boozy Ogre Lisa?)  should she pimp me out, even if she just means as a pen for hire. I do thank all the people out there who have given us words of encouragement. You have made this blog worthwhile from day one.

BOL:  Be On the Lookout  (I’ll also answer to Boogers On Lemons, just for Halloween.) And no, it wasn’t your pen I was planning to peddle, but there’s always that too. I’ve seen your pen, it’s a beaut.

L.A.: I don’t think it’s my pen you have in mind.

So much for an attempt at a moody/angsty/heartfelt blog. Although I’m sure even Butt Off Lisa thanks you all.

Retreat! Retreat!

Being a detailed account of our heroines’ foolhardy mission to edit their WIP in one short weekend.

SAT OCT 17

8:00am Lisa deposited by resigned husband at Lisa’s house

8:05am On the road to Nowhere Lake

8:36am Lisas arrive; overwhelming smell of cow manure wafting across Nowhere Lake.

8:37am Considering lunch options. Harsh Realization 1: neither Lisa remembered bread

8:38am Harsh Realization 2:  neither Lisa remember to bring thesaurus or dictionary

8:39am Lisa attempts to crack neighbor’s encoded wifi in face of desperate need for dictionary/thesaurus.com.  Fail.

8:40am – 12:58pm Working conditions primitive, heat sporadic, only managed to edit 17 of 198 pages

12.58pm Break for breadless lunch

1:40pm Back to editing

2:23pm Temperature in cottage finally reaches 60. Huzzah!

2:48pm Lisa viciously accuses Lisa of being a “word sucker” for deleting more words than adding. (nb: Term word sucker muttered in sullen undertones for rest of day)

3:06pm Harsh Realization 3: huge swathes of text need to be completely changed

3:07pm Harsh Realizition 3.5: Difficult to edit book when it is Nowhere. Close. To. Being. Done.

4:58pm Lisas get ugly over semantics. Shrill voices probably heard across the lake

7:25pm Break for local pizza run.

8:15pm  Back to editing

8:36pm Lisa angrily claims Lisa has changed all her best stuff

9:34pm One of the Lisas (who shall remain numberless) breaks down, claiming book sucks and all is for naught. Other Lisa must use happy voice to maintain calm.

9:40pm Harsh Realization 4: need untold hours/pages of work just to finish enough to try and edit again. There is still so much to do. What were we thinking? Slightly hyperventilating Lisa panics again.

10:36pm Lisas exhausted by day of unbridled editing. Only 66 pages edited, but must sleep.

SUN OCT 18

7:26am Lisa rises refreshed and wakes up grumpier Lisa

7:30-9:30am Breakfast consumed, showers taken, make-up slathered. World situation discussed.

9:30am Back to editing.

10:15am Harsh Realization 5: we may not have the writing chops we always believed we had.

12am Leftover pizza and diet coke break

12:30pm Indulge in paraffin wax treatments. Lisas are unable to turn pages due to wax covered, mitted hands.

12:45pm Wax catastrophe barely avoided as wax hardens on cold feet and is impossible to remove

1:30pm Lisa says, “Goodbye sweet words” every time she deletes words. Lisa wants to strangle her

1:31pm-3:30pm Lisa barely refrains from friendicide as Lisa whines about everything

3:30pm-4:15pm Got through 100 pages. Clean up, pack up, head home. Running late as usual.

What Can Lisa do for You?

Or The Long Dark Tea-Time of God Rest the Soul of Douglas Adams

***NEWS FLASH*** And Another Thing… the long-awaited part 6 of 3 in the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, by Eion Colfer, will be released October 12, 2009.

As I sit here, sipping my tea, basking in the waxing and waning sun streaming through my incredibly dirty picture window, knowing full well it is still only 40 degrees outside on the way to a supposed high of 58, I did not set out to write a run-on sentence, but sometimes it happens. Lots of things happen when ones intentions are good, but somehow self-absorption gets in the way. I believe my point is well-illustrated by this photo of someone who is not me, contemplating shoes, allowing me to achieve inspiration for our future award-winning WIP Will Steal for Shoes.

photo courtesy of zabara_tango

Usually I am the less organized, least structured, most easily distracted – squirrel! – Lisa of the bunch. But there is a method to my squirreliness, sometimes. Right now it takes the form of my attempts to reach out to others, connect with the writing community, and break the cycle of “if you don’t read and respond to my blog I will cry but I am too busy to read or respond to yours.”

To each of us is given the same 24 hours in a day and it is my mid-month resolution to waste them wisely. Help me to help you to help me become a better citizen with suggestions where to start.

We Liek Bloggging

Primarily we like this blogging gig because we are egomaniacs who love to hear/read ourselves say/write anything. Secondarily, however, we ♥ it because we never have to edit it. And, even if we do make some minor changes, it is just a matter of glancing at a paragraph or two and correcting our spelling (especially for Lisa 2).  

We previously stated that we liked to tweak. Oh yes, tweaking the story is giddy fun when it is simply a matter of changing/improving whatever the previous Lisa wrote (because, really, what was she thinking) and moving on forward. But now that our WIP is growing longer, we are amazed at the time it takes to edit anything in the document. The tiniest change can mean trolling through the manuscript, looking for anything that simple little change has affected.

On the blog, we just don’t have to care. Sometimes we call ourselves Lisa 1 & Lisa 2, sometimes we call ourselves Lisa A & Lisa B. We are wild and carefree. It is so refreshing.

On the WIP, however, we are all business. After all, no one wants to read a book where the main character eats lunch twice in one page because one of the idiots writing the book didn’t pay enough attention to what the other wrote not one paragraph earlier. Lisa 2 thinks she can control and tame this editing beast by keeping an extensive outline. Lisa 1 believes it is a force of nature to be grappled with directly.

Despite having gone through the WIP many times, we keep finding mistakes we missed the first 50 times around. We have, therefore, decided to immure ourselves in a remote, wi-fi-less location for an entire weekend while we attempt to lick our wayward and flocculent thoughts into shape.

We’re hoping we actually get some work done on our weekend. Of course, it could devolve into a weekend of junk food and girly fun with never a laptop opened. We hope not. We hope that holing up away from civilization will help us buckle down and tackle this monster.

Wish us luck.

Adventures in Lisaland

First, the good news: We have officially hit the 50,000 word mark with our WIP “Will Steal for Shoes.” Accordingly, we know this means nothing to many of you, and we are not entirely unsympathetic because the bad news is we can not seem to figure out exactly what the “perfect” chick-lit story word count should be either.

Lisa2 read 45,000 words when we were first starting out. Piece of cake. We could manage that with three hands tied behind our back. And then we came across a seemingly reliable source that said a minimum of 75,000. That was a crushing blow, but only temporarily. We are undaunted. We have never been less daunted in our entire self-effacing lives.

This brings me to the incredible coming of age of the Lisas – all Lisas, everywhere. The name Lisa used to be nothing more than a trendy, commonplace 1960’s moniker. Now, we are a force to be reckoned with. There are Lisa authors, lawyers and Indian chiefs. Heck, even my gynecologist is a Lisa. When Lisa and I are as famous as J. K. Rowling we will refuse to deal with anyone outside of the realm of Lisaness. We will make many various and sundry unreasonable demands because, well, darn it, that is just what creative geniuses do.

The downside to this is one day soon there will be oodles and oodles of Lisa octogenarians. We will take over Florida, storm Disney World and rename Adventureland “Lisaland.” We will refuse to wear anything without spandex and we will tsk tsk the fate of our great-grandchildren, who will be likely be named Titus, Esther, Brutus and Cleopatra Come on, who will ever take those names seriously?

One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

Some people have told us they can not tell which Lisa has written which blog posts. Our first response to this is: Hee, Hee. We are shallow like that. Especially The Other Lisa.

However, intrepid readers, you are not alone in your inability to tell our writing apart. We often can’t remember who typed what in our WIP. And we are grateful for this. If our writing styles were too different, our novel would read as though it was written by committee. Instead it is written by two middle-aged women who mostly agree, but then rewrite and edit each other’s stuff . Then that gets rewritten and edited–and in the end we aren’t always sure who did what.

That Other Lisa is trying to foist all the mistakes on me. Fine, I say.  I’ll take the heat. But I only sink to great depths because I want to soar to great heights. The witty dialogue? Mine. The poignant moments of tearjerking drama? Mine. The hilarious scene in which justice takes the form of dehydrated potato flakes? All mine. The Other Lisa will deny my genius. Don’t believe her.

Despite all the confusion, we really are two quite separate people. Some of you may know only Lisa A, others only Lisa B. A few lucky souls are fortunate enough to know both of us.  Whatever your situation, we want to help you by providing a handy list of some of our differences. Here you go.

• Lisa A writes deeply moving passages examining the angst-ridden underbelly of modern society. Lisa B writes the naughty bits.
• Lisa B wears nicer underwear than Lisa A.
• Lisa A prefers to write in the morning. Lisa B prefers to write at night.
• Lisa B’s favorite coin is the Wheat Penny. Lisa A thinks it is goofy to even have a favorite coin.
• Lisa A likes being Lisa A. Lisa B is still bitter that Lisa A named her Lisa B.
• Lisa B has a small, but not entirely unattractive, tail. Lisa A wasn’t supposed to tell you that.

Hope this helps.

P.S. Check out our new header image. I think we might be in Germany. Achtung!

Contagious Concentration Consumption

This is serious, don’t tell Lisa.

I’ve only written a couple of thousand words over the past (ahem) several days. I’m not sure exactly how many days, but since my goal was 1,000/per, I am in serious word count debt. Perhaps there is a government program to help me. A word bank would be great; maybe a nice word tax credit.

The problem is, as best I can tell, Contagious Concentration Consumption, or CCC. This is not to be confused with the CDC or CBC, although they are more closely entwined than anyone would like to admit. It is also not in the same category as conjunctivitis; however, I would gladly settle for a good old case of pinkeye-excuse right about now. Some people would equate CCC to laziness, however this would be as cruel as calling an alcoholic a drunk.

Just remember, whatever you call it and whatever you do, don’t tell Lisa. If she gets wind that I have been word-slacking (again) she will penalize me. And then: no shoe shopping research, no editing excursion, no nothing. I will be back to sitting in bed, playing computer games and drooling in my oatmeal, waiting for a blizzard to drive me insane, like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.” That’s if we’re lucky.

Plus, there’s the contagious part – if Lisa, who barely survived that last bout of writer’s block, catches it, we’ll Never Finish. You will have to suffer this blog forever with no hope of salvation.

So remember, mum’s the word. Although “odoriferous” is kind of funny too, I used that one today in a private message on facebook. You know who you are.

Peace out.

Greetings From the Other Lisa

Until now, Lisa has had free reign over this blog. This marks a pivotal moment in Lisa & Lisa blog history. I only wish that we could, in some small way, commemorate the moment. Wait…Egad! This amazing post will live on in the annals of internet history forever. Huzzah! Who is sitting on the edge of his or her seat, wondering what profound words I have to contribute? I see that hand, thank you. And that hand. God bless you.

So I tried my hand at a “non-specific” blog once. Didn’t have much to say. I am a woman of so few words. If you believe this I have a bridge I’d like you to consider jumping from. (From which one should consider jumping.)

I have been pondering the many facets of grammatical correctness lately, in my semi-obsessive compulsive way. Is that a grammatically correct sentence? I suppose it is something a writer should concern herself with. With which a writer should concern herself.

Not to mention punctuation; the semi-colon in particular. And the dash — I do so love the dash. Along with the use of complete sentences. And let’s not forget paragraph format, or whatever one calls that business. This writing stuff is not for the weak of heart. It’s a lot more than stringing together a bunch of clever words and spinning an award-winning story, that’s for sure.

On the other hand, in some ways it’s not as hard as I thought it would be, and, as Lisa has mentioned, it’s mostly due to having a co-conspirator (on whom to blame mistakes). And now, I must conclude the aforementioned thought with at least one additional sentence, to insure proper paragraph structure.

But it’s so much fun to be just a little naughty.