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Wednesday, October 23, 2013

THE DAYS ARE PRECIOUS_A GHOSTLY DISCUSSION OF NaNo



Dorothy Parker, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway (their ghosts rather) and I were playing poker at my table at Meilori's.

Dorothy Parker took a sip of her whisky and smiled at me. 


"If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style.

The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

"Bah!" snapped Hemingway.  "The lemmings are throwing together words just as fast as they can to create hovels of novels."

Mark lit a cigar and grinned, "Well, I certainly believe in using the right word not its second cousin.  Hemingway, did you mean to rhyme?  Weren't you a poet, too, Dorothy?"

Dorothy bent down, grabbed a rubber doll whose throat was torn from ear to ear, and tossed it to her poodle -- who faithful even beyond death -- lingered beside her mistress.



"Ha! My verses. I cannot say poems. Like everybody was then, I was following in the exquisite footsteps of Miss Millay, unhappily in my own horrible sneakers.

 My verses are no damn good. Let’s face it, honey, my verse is terribly dated—as anything once fashionable is dreadful now. I gave it up, knowing it wasn’t getting any better, but nobody seemed to notice my magnificent gesture."

Fitz, as he liked me to call him, took a sip of his own champagne.  "Never confuse a single failure with a final defeat."

Hemingway gruffed, "We are all defeated in the end.  It is only the struggle that matters and why you struggle in the first place."

He glared at Ratatoskr who scampered from ghost to ghost, looking at their hands and whispering in my ear.  "He's telling you our cards, isn't he?"

I shook my head.  "He's merely teasing you and telling me terrible jokes."

"How terrible?" frowned Twain.

I sighed, "What did Jay-Z call his girlfriend before they got married? FeyoncĂ©."

Dorothy groaned, "Ouch!"

I said to her, "It’s a popular supposition that there was much more communication between writers in the twenties. The Round Table discussions in the Algonquin, for example."

"Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, 'You’re all a lost generation.' That got around to certain people and we all said, 'Whee! We’re lost.'

 Perhaps it suddenly brought to us the sense of change. Or irresponsibility. But don’t forget that, though the people in the twenties seemed like flops, they weren’t. Fitzgerald, over there and the rest of them, reckless as they were, drinkers as they were, they worked damn hard and all the time."

I asked, "Did the “lost generation” attitude you speak of have a detrimental effect on your own work?"

"Silly of me to blame it on dates, but so it happened to be. Dammit, it was the twenties and we had to be smarty. I wanted to be cute. That’s the terrible thing. I should have had more sense."

Fitz sighed, "At eighteen, our convictions are hills from which we look.  At forty-five, they are caves in which we hide."

Mark Twain nodded, "Each day is like a coin.  We can spend it any way we like.  But we can only spend it once."

Hemingway lit his own cigar and puffed out the smoky words.  "The living think they have more days than they do.  They look out at a thousand lives.  At the end, they'll turn around and find only one --

and if they frittered away precious days investing in work that is inferior, that one life will be inferior."

Fitz looked into the shadows.  "All good writing is swimming underwater and holding your breath, knowing it will not last."

Ratatoskr looked up at me from the table top.  "What do you think of this NaNo nonsense, Roland."

I smiled sadly.  "Some of my friends are for it.  Some of them are against it."

Dorothy asked, "And you?"

"I'm for my friends."

Ratatoskr groaned.



6 comments:

  1. Ah, I like your non-position, hahaha :)) For me, it's a head thing. Typically, I get caught up in too many rules and regs and end up going in circles. NaNo is like a brief time when my mind believes it's okay to just focus on the story. No rules. My last NaNo effort is actually really decent. I just stink at editing. Like, really. This time, I'm going to do some editing as I go, whether I hit the goal or not. That is, if I participate. Churning out drivel is not an option. Does any of this make sense? I hope you've been well. Lately, I feel like the guy twirling plates and hoops and balancing stuff.....whew!

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  2. Taking the Switzerland approach?
    I still believe in it because I wouldn't have produced two books without its help.

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  3. I loved the people at your round table (or is it square?) Roland, several of my fave authors (Hem, Fitz and Twain) and a smart woman writer. I don't know much about Dorothy, but I like her attitude.

    NANO - Not for me, but I don't disparage it. Whatever works for each person. I'm using NANO month to write more as well, but with no group hug attached. (just me, up in my garret).

    Thanks for checking on the comments, Roland, loved that one about Ratatoskr burying you. Not funny, I know, but. . .

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  4. Words Crafter:
    Your very name is the secret to writing: crafting each word carefully. Your name is my position on NaNo -- you cannot carefully craft your words on the run for quantity. I let each person choose the path that seems "write" to them. :-)

    I am now going into my 5 day work week with the last 2 being solo PLUS being on first-call. Whew!!

    Alex:
    Any man who can visit 100 blogs daily has the self-discipline to write a novel without NaNo. I have faith in you. :-)

    D.G.:
    Luckily the ghost of Mark Twain was there to defend me as Hemingway laughed!

    November is a good time to concentrate on writing since a lot of our readers will be pounding a tidal wave of words! :-)

    Thanks for having me on your blog.

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  5. LOL. I'm afraid you'd make a good politician. Oh my goodness, I loved that.

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  6. Too much commitment for me. I'll be sitting out the next two months.

    .....dhole

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