Okay, it’s not a transcript because we’re together in the Village, but we spent the night brainstorming (Krissie feel asleep which tells you how exciting it was, but Lani and I made it past midnight), and as always, talking about it together in person speeds things up incredibly. Among other things we decided:

That scene I was having so much trouble with wasn’t working because it’s in the wrong place, so I can just move it to Act Two where it absolutely fits and will no longer kick and scream as I try to beat it into submission.

I have to cut a lot of that scene with Wolfie because it drags. I was going to cut the whole scene but Lani and Krissie were positive that the scene where Sam rises has to be there, so I’ll just tighten and focus it which it needed all along anyway. In fact, I have a lot of rewriting to do, but I love what we figured out, so it’s really good.

There are not too many characters although Lani and Krissie are not convinced of the need for Ray and Milki, and I am. I don’t understand these people who are against a cast of thosands. I pointed out that even with Ray and Milki, the cast was still at sixteen, and my books always have seventeen characters (not a rule, it just ends up that way) so actually I was down one. Then I was talking to Lani and realized that for a three beat I needed one more character who would be HYSTERICAL, and Lani was saying, “No, no, no,” but she was laughing, too. so she knows it’d be funny. And I’d have my three-beat. I think I can bend her to my will, but then she thinks she’s going to get that Jonestown joke back in there, too. Lani pointed out that there were also nine dogs, but we weren’t sure if they counted as cast or not. They’re talking but . . .

We had the wrong dog picture for Squash after Lani wrote a rough of her next scene in which Squash talks So we went on the net to find the dog that looked the way Squash talked and . . . I’ll let Lani tell you about the new Squash. But we were laughing really hard when we found the real Squash’s picture. She’s a beautiful dog, but she’s SO the picture of the voice that Lani wrote.

It might be a good idea to cast our dogs with actors since while we were talking about Squash, we were trying to describe who she was by looking for placeholders (we found her: Janeane Garafolo). So we started trying to cast the other dogs. We already had Bikki as Paris Hilton, and I’m torn between Albert Brooks and Michael Keaton in Night Shift for Wolfie, and Krissie thinks Beastie may be John Goodman, and I thought maybe Natalie Portman for Ummi, and then we got to Bailey and decided he might be Steve Zahn. And we wandered off into a new topic. So we have no idea who Baby, Ziggy and Mort are, although I’m thinking Mort is Peter Lorre.

Yes, this is what real authors do to plot their books. Trust me, I’m an author.

Then we put the post-it notes up on the cabinets again trying to figure out Act One, which we did and which was how we discovered that I’d already written Shar’s Act One so the stuff I had for the “I’m Stuck” scene goes into Act Two plus all the stuff I’m going to cut from the turning point scene in the temple goes into Act Two, so once we figure out what happens in Act Two I’m going to have a lot of it. Very happy about that since I have to go back and write Kami there. Although I already know what her Act One scenes are, so that won’t be as WTF as this last part of Act One has been.

And tomorrow we go to the Met to look at the Mesopotamian exhibit. See, we’re working. Nothing but good times ahead.