An Open Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Dear Mr. Fitzgerald,

I have a bone to pick with you. Stop smiling.

Alright, first and foremost, I finished your book yesterday, The Beautiful and the Damned. I really wanted to like it, because there's something about you that I like. You're such a goddamn tragic figure who had a ridiculously large number of insecurities and self destructive tendencies and romantic visions of the world.... I mean, I wouldn't want to have been friends with you or anything; you would have driven me completely up the wall. But there was something engaging about you regardless which came through your letters in Dangerous Friendship: Fitzgerald and Hemingway. You were immensely flawed, but that may have been what made you so likable. You were fascinating.

Unfortunately, I'm having problems with the extension of that same tolerance for juxtaposition to your work.

When Virginia Woolf and I undertook the rereading Great Gatsby last week, we were mildly alarmed to discover just how empty that novel was. I mean, it's not like stuff doesn't happen, given that one person gets run over by a car, one is bewildered by real books, and another gets shot in a pool because he's completely spineless and disillusioned and lies and cheats and rowed a boat and really didn't understand the intricate workings of that crazy thing we call reality and gee golly I'm pretty sure that was meant to be you, but despite the volume of things happening in a relatively short book, it's just... empty. Woolf and I came to the conclusion that the emptiness was, of course, purposeful in that it was meant to reflect both the temporal 20's as well as the age strictures, and we were able to draw out distinct tangles and pinpoints that, once our conversation concluded, allowed us to pull together an overall interpretation of your work that left us feeling better than we had at the outset.

Beautiful and the Damned? Not so much. 

Woolf has not read that one - it was my own undertaking because I was determined to discover that the mess you called This Side of Paradise was only a one time, completely irritating piece of melodramatic nonsense. I'd really hoped that B&D would show a greater sense of purpose in the writing, less time wasted rolling around through inner ramblings and justifications that didn't particularly ingratiate me to your characters, let alone you. But B&D was just really freaking aggravating. I didn't like any of the characters, mainly because they were all morons. However, where I'm getting the impression in the even more melodramatic work The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford that I'm actually supposed to dislike his characters because they are all morons, I'm not entirely certain that you intended for me to find your characters moronic. But they are. They are completely moronic. I felt that, even though Anthony proves himself to be the laziest, most self absorbed and egotistical child on the planet by the end, you still wanted me to pity him. Pity him! I wanted to throw him under a bus!

Really, Fitzgerald. What were you doing? 

And don't get me started on Gloria. I find it very hard to engage with characters where the only one who displays any amount of intelligence keeps getting described as looking like "a large cat" and "a tiger" and who sits on top of a railway station watching the sun come up after describing at length why he doesn't actually think the world means anything. FITZGERALD. WE'VE BEEN THROUGH THIS. Why did I read TSOP if you were going to tell me the same thing in a book with a much nicer cover some years later? And why the hell is it over 300 pages?! Nothing actually happens! They date, they get married, he goes off to war and she's told she's too old to play an ingenue, and then they stop loving each other and life is meaningless. WHY DID THAT TAKE 322 PAGES, FITZGERALD?

WHY

WHY

WHY

Oh, stop looking at me like that. You're a goddamn literary icon - what do you care about the fact that some of your writing makes me want to bang the book against my head repeatedly until my vision spaces out and suddenly everything seems interesting again? And I'm not saying ALL your writing is like this, anyway. I just told you that Woolf and I redeemed Gatsby together (though Flannery O claims that Daisy isn't a selfish moronic ditz, but I think Flannery probably needs to stop drinking), and I actually do like your stories in Tales of the Jazz Age. Plus, I haven't even told you yet that Leviticus (or was it St. John?) and I are going to a library book sale on Saturday and I plan on finding some more of your work if I can. I'm going to try Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald. Last attempt. Don't make me regret it, because I absolutely refuse to read The Love of the Last Tycoon. Nobody cares about tycoons unless we're talking about the guy who gets you out of jail free in Monopoly. Just saying.

So you have one final chance, Fitzgerald. You'd better not have screwed up it.... when you wrote it about a century ago..........

You were warned.

Regards, 

The Bird.

Some Photos What I Have Taken

As I sit here waiting for Virginia Woolf to sort out the problem of the faulty Skype microphone, I figured I'd make a slightly different post (and one meant skillfully to hide the fact that I haven't worked on my wretched revisions today and do not really intend to). Instead, I thought I'd talk about photography!

I've found in recent years (like, the past single recent year) that I greatly enjoy messing around with my crappy, blurry, rotten, stupid, ugly camera. I'm sure I'd like messing around with a not-crappy, blurry, rotten stupid, ugly camera even more, but I'm not one to spend lots of money without endlessly fretting over it first, and I've got other things to worry about, like Colorado and San Diego. Thankfully though, there's such a thing as photo enhancing, and I have had the good fortune to find a couple people who don't mind standing, sitting, or smelling a bunch of flowers for a long period of time while I hiss and mutter over my malfunctioning camera. I've never really shared these photos before except with the people who modeled for me, so I figured that for the fun of it I'd post some photos here. First time ever, never seen before, whoop de - freaking - doo.

Anyway!

My lovely friend Samantha. She is lame and told me I couldn't take more photos of her until she loses weight. I may kill her. 

 This is what it looks like when people touch magical boxes they aren't supposed to. Put it down, Miranda!

This is why I can't take my beautiful friend Amy to the Art Institute. She causes a scene.

The Dawn Ashke of mention and I decided to do a Lisbeth Salander - inspired photoshoot in the city one day. She looked so tough and awesome that I thought she was going to beat *me* up.

Seriously, Sam? Come be my model again. WTF.

The Prettiest Miranda of Them All and the Dollar Store Bubbles! (obviously an official title)

Amy, Elephant, and some great works of literature. Sort of. Moby Dick can go suck a... well...

Ms. Ashke doing professional model-level vogueing in front of the coolest wall we've ever accidentally stumbled across.

The actual pictures are all larger, of course, but I figured I'd stick them up. I really enjoy playing around with photos, and would always love some new models to add to my fold (I'M LOOKING AT YOU, LEVITICUS!! YOU CAN ONLY SAY NO FOR SO LONG UNTIL YOU GIVE UP BECAUSE I'M REALLY EFFING ANNOYING). But yes. So if anyone sees this and would like to be a model (or if my current models see these and go "hey! I want to take more pictures!", just let me know!! As long as you're somewhat near me. I do this for free, after all.

End of slightly sales-pitchy blog post.

Revision Day.... uh.....8?

Hello! I know I haven't posted in six days, but I was busy. Unfortunately, I wasn't really busy doing anything creative, or for work, or anything else, but whatever. What do you want from me?

Actually, I did a lot of reading this past weekend and completed rereading A Room of One's Own and first time reading A Moveable Feast. I've recently started The Beautiful and the Damned, and I'm already kind of questioning where the hell it's going. I WOULD be reading The Good Soldier, but it was stolen from me by someone whose name begins with D, ends with D, and has an "a" in the middle. No surprise there.

I have also, believe it or not, been legitimately working on my revisions. I've gotten through the first ten chapters, and have been finding pieces that I don't like and need to fix, or just phrasing problems. Whenever I find such things, I leave myself helpful notes.

Example of helpful notes:

That is apparently what I do when my descriptions start putting *me* to sleep. When in doubt, have people talk about how ugly the house is! Yeah!

Also, thank you for answers to my previous entry's question about backstory. Though Ecclesiastes (I'm expanding your Biblical scope, St. Mark) was the only one to respond via blog, I actually got some texts about the matter, so thanks for those!! Like I said, I'm just worried about pushing the backstory too much when it isn't going to be mentioned in this first book fully, but I know it's something people will have to read to judge. Thanks again!

In other news, Hemingway grabbed up my manuscript yesterday and started randomly critiquing a page in the middle, which didn't really do much for my self esteem because how stupid does everything sound halfway through with no sense of what the heck is going on? However, he later told me that he thought I was "almost there", which I think was meant to insinuate that I was "almost there" in terms of having good writing, instead of "almost there" to the point of sucking. I think. I hope.

Woolf, Ecclesiastes, I will leave the ultimate decision of book burning to you. Whenever I finish my damn revisions and rewrites. Again. Bwaaaaaaaa.

Also, everyone say hello to William Faulkner!! She's got her own blog up and running, so go take a look at it and leave meaningful commentary! Though you might not want to call her William Faulkner over there. People will get confused.

Revision Day 2

It is hot still. I am sitting here eating corn chips and drinking lukewarm coffee that I am unwilling to reheat, mainly because I had to spray down the whole stupid kitchen thanks to all the goddamn ants that decided this heatwave would be a great time to repopulate and come hang out on the floors and countertops. I had to block off the kitchen because of this, which means that the dog is panting worriedly at my feet because she is a border collie and panting worriedly is pretty much her hobby.

Ugh. Too many corn chips. Whose idea was that?

Anyway, this is officially day two of revisions, and I've...well, I've not really done anything yet. Day one was a fairly good success. I got through the first five chapters, and that five week wait really did help. I tend to be obsessively critical of my work, and when Stephen King's book told me (more accurate than the phrase I used last time) that I should wait and will then find myself being less critical, I thought the book was probably lying to me and spreading rumors. So I decided to start revision immediately.

This happened. I started obsessively rewriting every single sentence, twisting the words around and adding new words and attempting to be creatively alliterative and blahblahblahblah.

So I put it away.

This is what my revision scheme looks like after waiting:

Much less critical! There are still quite a few notes and words scribbled out and things underlined and what have you, all done in the lovely green of the Sonic Screwdriver Pen gifted to me by the illustrious Ms. Ashke, but it doesn't seem as awful as it did when I tried revision directly following the printing. However, I think that the parts I'm heading into now may contain some serious problems in terms of silly little things like logic and continuity, so I'm balking a bit. 

Plus it doesn't help that I've been continuously distracted by my phone. Last night it was lying to me and St. John (Or is it St. Matthew?) about whether or not Jupiter was where we thought it was, this morning it was apparently receiving text messages from Nora Hawthorne (the love child between Nora Roberts and Nathaniel)'s sink. The inimitable Ms. Ashke's pocket dialed me next, and now one confused person is sending me pictures of a menu where everything is named after a work of literature. I told her to get the Edgar Allan Potatoes. 

I'll try and do something, though, because Hemingway will be here soon, and we're off to see my famous actress friend's play tonight. However, I have a question:

How much backstory is too much backstory? My main character, Andy, has a past that is not fully discussed in the book I'm revising now. However, her past is completely the focus of the second story (if St. Luke and Woolf don't tell me to go hang it all and never write on this again), so how much do you think would be apt for the first in terms of teasers or whatever the hell. I don't really know what I'm asking. Just... backstory! What do you think! Thanks!

T - 1 day till Revision

Sheesh, it's hot around here.

Usually a Chicago March does not find me sitting in a t-shirt and slowly sweating away the afternoon, but apparently this year is the exception. Today the dog and I went on a walk, and even for her it was too hot to pee on everything within leg-lifting range like she normally does. Instead, she trotted along until we got to the duck pond a few blocks down, where she promptly submerged herself, enraging the nearby geese and nearly dragging me in with her. Thankfully she lost her momentum when the water got up over her legs, so I was able to balance myself on the edge of the water while she slogged around as deep as the leash would let her go.

I wish geese weren't so evil. They're really rather pretty birds, big and soft looking, but the fact that they would just as soon carve a hole in my head with their beaks is not a particularly endearing quality. They spent most of our visit squawking from the other end of the pond with some much quieter and very pretty mallards sporting beautiful emerald green heads. By the time Sadie deigned to get out, the geese had rounded up their rage-courage and started to advance.

Stupid geese. Also, stupid 80 degree weather. Ernest Hemingway texted me yesterday and said that last year, the temperature was around 32. Blaaaaarg.

Virginia Woolf and I are tearing through the twenties in our reading lately, and we're eagerly waiting for St. Matthew (or is that St. John?) to join us, but she's being obstinate and reading Game of Thrones instead. Of course, I bought that for her, so I really shouldn't complain. Her entire blog is about complaining, though, so maybe if she posts a post about books (THISISASUBTLEHINT) I will protest over there. But I've never read much fiction from the legends like Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and reading Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and a book called A Dangerous Friendship - Hemingway and Fitzgerald both have rather ridiculously spurred me on to read more from that generalized era of people. Woolf and I re-read Gatsby and discussed it at length, and that with Broccoli's book has made me love Fitzgerald just a bit. I'm still suspicious of Hemingway, though, but we're going to do Moveable Feast as it's more reminiscing than bullfights or war.

Of course, then Woolf decided she wants to get through the real Woolf, so I'm in the middle of re-reading Room of One's Own. I've fallen back in love. This is ridiculous - I feel all polyamorous.

Ms. Ashke has recently announced that she is plugging along with her own writing, so if she's reading this, she'd better STOP READING THIS AND GET BACK TO WRITING. GOD.

Wrote a short story today about dinosaurs. It's stupid. Maybe I'll send it to St. Luke (or is it St. Mark?). She had a good meeting, so I should probably make her day a little stupider.

Tomorrow begins the revisions. Blaaaarg. BLAAAAARG. Etc.

So I've written a book.

It's a very weird thing to say. It seems so pretentious and overly ambitious and like I'm completely full of myself and delusional, but it's bizarrely true; I actually wrote a book. There it is, up in that picture. It's not completely finished, of course - it seems like everything I write needs about 957 revisions before I even begin to debate letting other people read - but look at all those pages, bound together in a plastic sheath of finality. I'm not sure if it's a good book, or even largely readable (blah blah self doubt blah blah creeping despair etc), but it's a little too late now. Now I have to polish it up, do my last set of revisions, and pass it along to my two long suffering primary readers, Zanzabara (Leader of the Not-So-Free World - KNEEL) and Tina (the Super Awesome Cool Person) (This is ridiculous - I did not come up with either of these, for the record). If they like it and give me the green light, I'm going to start sharing it with a third set of already enlisted readers (for whom I do not yet have pseudonym requests, praise it all). It's remarkable how many encouraging (and strange) people I know. Quite a few friends and acquaintances alike, upon hearing I finished the stupid thing, went "So when can I read it?" Very sweet, very supportive, and apparently possessing little regard for personal sanity. Two of them didn't even ask what it was about.

I didn't tell them. I'm sure it will go well.

Currently, however, the manuscript is collecting dust on my drafting table. Though I proceeded to rip the plastic binding off and wave it around in a fit of excitement about two seconds after I got it (ask Tina the Super Awesome Cool Person - I practically hit her in the face with it), I gingerly set it aside almost immediately afterwards for two reasons:

1) I carefully set it aside because, surprisingly, Stephen King told me to. Well, not personally. I would have made much more of a fuss had Stephen King shown up at my house to talk books. No, I read his advice in On Writing, which was a very fun book to read. King's advice is that, when a first draft is completely finished, to set it aside for a minimum of 6 weeks. King promotes the idea of starting something new to take your mind off the finished work in an effort to distance yourself. (I found that to be very good advice, since when I initially began revising two days after getting the manuscript, I was correcting EVERYTHING). So, that was one of my reasons to set the manuscript aside. The other reason was

2) Because I  forgot to put page numbers on any of it. I have since numbered them all by hand while skyping with Zanzabara, Leader of the Not-So-Free World (Kneel). It's only about 169 pages, but damned if I'd be able to put it back together again with no page numbers. I'd probably just set it all on fire and pay 20 bucks to print it off again.

So those are my two wonderful, completely mature reasons for why I've put off my second to last (I hope) revision. We're slowly reaching the 5 week mark, though, and I feel that will be about the limit of my rumination time. I'll admit that I haven't really started anything new, but I have written eight short stories (don't ask - about two are good, and by good I mean I don't wince when re-reading them) and there is the small fact that the fifth week coincides with Spring Break. I plan on spending that whole week doing the revisions. At this point, I've written the story, revised the story, rewritten some of the revisions, scrapped the rewrites and wrote the whole thing over AGAIN, and then revised THAT before printing. If it sucks, that's pretty much how it's going to stay. I just... have the compulsive need to look at it again.

Well, that's what I'll be doing for awhile. Unfortunately, afterwards I'm pretty certain that I'll be going completely crazy while waiting for feedback from Tina the Super Awesome Cool Person and Zanzabara, Leader of the Not-So-Free World (KNEEL). I've decided that I should probably have more than one project going just in case, you know, the book completely sucks. That's where this blog comes in. I've got ideas and plans and projects in my head, but the thing is that I never really talk about them with anyone, and because of my lack of willingness to communicate (I'm weird about this stuff, again - ask Tina the Super Awesome Cool Person about the time I dragged her on a walk to talk about the plot for a story she was already reading because I felt weird talking about it in a normal setting) these projects and ideas just sort of... never happen. Maybe if I share a couple of ideas, and get some low level feedback along the lines of "DIDN'T YOU SAY YOU WERE GOING TO WRITE A STORY ABOUT A FAMILY OF ANTELOPES? WHERE IS IT?" then maybe I'll get inspired.

Maybe. I don't know. We'll see. Until then, don't actually mention antelopes to me. That's totally not my story.