the next big thing

Claire and I are working on a new book. 

This is how it happened:

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to her on FB that since Trump became prez, I have not been able to write anything.

This isn't technically true; I've written a few things, but not much. And, truth be told, I didn't write much when Obama was president, either, or Clinton or Carter. My dearth of work is not necessarily tied to Republican administrations.  I am simply not a particularly ambitious writer. Or blogger. Or person. I made the statement to Claire because I was bored, just blowing smoke outta my ass on FB. I had run out of things to say. You know how it is.

Although once I said it, I liked the sound of it. I blame Trump for my languishing career. That it isn't true makes it even more Trumpy.

The actual shit he does is so much worse than anything I could even blame on him, anyway. 

Claire liked the whole blame Trump for writer's bloc thing, too, although it isn't true for her, either. I mean, she puts out, like, forty novels a day. Still, it pissed us off that Trump could succeed at the (alleged) ruination of our (alleged) creative (alleged) productivity. Fuck that shit. His Russian bloc versus our writer's bloc.

So, we decided to do another book together. Because fuck Trump. If my career is going to languish, it sure as fuck isn't going to be because of Fuckface (Trump. Not Claire). It will be because I like watching TV and thinking about clothes.

Collaborating with Claire is one of my most favorite things in the world. And if it wasn't for that pesky issue of having to actually write something, I would collaborate with her every day for the rest of my life. 

We work together, separately, on our Google doc drafts - she, in L.A., me, in Portland. Google Docs is an awesome way to write because we can each see what the other is writing, as they are writing it. And our favorite thing to do is to figure out what the other is writing and finish the sentence with something immature, like, "between the sheets."

Oh. My. Gawwwwd. How we laugh. We laugh and laugh for hours at our hilarity. 

We have missed two deadlines so far.

A few years ago, Claire and I co-wrote some fiction. That wasn't as much fun for me because we traded off writing chapters and characters, and we couldn't fuck around with each other's sentences that way. Although sometimes I would sneak into Claire's chapters and add random shit like, "Wouldja play me a cock-a-doodle-doo?" in the middle of her character's sentence.

Woo boy, talk about hilarious.

Claire is A Serious Novelist and I try her patience. I don't really know the rules of grammar and I make up words, and typos make me laugh so I leave them in, and it's a lot of work to find the apostrophe key on my keyboard so I never use contractions even though Claire points out that in real life people speak in contractions so I need to write dialogue that way.

But it is hard. So I do not do it.

And she patiently highlights my uncontracted verbosity, deletes it, and writes it correctly. I imagine her long-suffering sighs. I'm like a naughty monkey that she's been forced to work with, side-stepping my banana peels and looking the other way when I present my butt to her on FaceTime.

So this time, this book, I am going to rein it in a little bit. I owe it to Claire. I love her so much.

I can see that I've already started getting on her nerves, however, because I keep forgetting to use the "tab" button instead of the space bar. This, evidently, has cost Claire countless hours in repair of my capricious formatting. The last time I did it, she reminded me IN ALL CAPS that the DIFFERENCE between the space bar and the "tab" key is....blah, blah, blah.

It is hard. So I do not do it.

And anyway, it's not like working with Claire is perfect, either. 

When we have been working for a long while, she always says she needs to take a potato chip break. Which is cool, even laudable.

But she eats only ONE potato chip. And she's done.

ONE potato chip. 

I just ate EIGHT potato chips while typing this sentence. 

Yeah, so I misuse the space bar. Sue me. Claire eats one potato chip and then gets back to work.

I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers for my crime. Claire would hang for hers.

Okay, back to work.

I'm going'to use all contractions eve'when the words can't be made'into them. Claire's going'to laugh so'hard.