ANITA LOOS_YOU CAN'T KEEP A BAD GHOST DOWN

{"Like cheap booze, you can't keep a bad ghost down."
- Anita Loos, ghost.}

Your glowing comments about my article I posted this morning made this down ghost feel up.

And let me tell you :
that's the first time this girl has been felt up by strangers in a long time.

No howls from the feminists, please. The trouble with the Women's Liberationists is that they keep getting up on soapboxes

and proclaiming women are brighter than men.

Which is true,

but it should be kept quiet, or it ruins the whole racket.

My brother, Clifford, would painstakingly correct anyone who mispronounced our name. I never cared what people called me.

So my brother was always Dr. 'Lohse' while I became Miss 'Loose.'

Which was fitting since to survive in the madness that was Hollywood in the 1920's, I had to play it fast and loose.

Hollywood was insane then. To place in the limelight a great number of people who ordinarily would be chambermaids and chauffeurs,

and give them unlimited power and wealth, was bound to produce lively results.

But Fate keeps on happening. And insanity has apparently become the norm in Hollywood.

Still and all, this is Roland's blog, and he likes to help out his fellow writers. Luckily for you, I do, too.

In fact, I'm going to give you a way never to be stuck for what to write next ever again.

Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? And here I am not even running for political office.

It relates to a trick I learned to lose weight : you always leave the table hungry.

You may not know this, but it takes a bite of food a half hour to make it down all those intestinal highways and byways to your stomach.

Eat til you feel full, and 30 minutes later, you'll feel over-stuffed -- because that is what you are.

In like manner, when you're writing and going good,

when you know what's going to happen next,

Stop.

If you do that every day when you're writing your masterpiece, you will never be stuck.

Don't think or worry about the next scene. This way your subconscious will work out all sorts of nifty details as you go about the rest of your day's activities.

Consciously think about what you will write next, and you'll be tired before you start.

It's like staring at the brooding, silent phone, willing it to ring, thinking about that damn man who won't call.

By the time he does call, you're so tired of waiting and out of sorts, you haven't the wit or the patience to put him down like the sick dog he is.

Now, this trick won't make you rich, but wanting to be rich is all too human and all too useless.

There is a serious defect in the thinking of someone who wants --

more than anything else --

to become rich.

As long as they don't have the money, it'll seem like a worthwhile goal.

Once they do, they'll understand how important other things are --

Like enjoying each breath you breathe, the taste of that luscious strawberry, each light caress of your lover's fingertips on your cheek --

all those things I took for granted,

until I died.

Don't you be like me, girls. Please.

Well, maybe just a little bit. "Naughty" can have its own rewards.
***
Speaking of naughty ...

take a peek into the world in which I grew up :

A WOMAN'S TOUCH_ANITA LOOS, GHOST

{"Today there are no fairy tales for us to believe in,

and this is possibly a reason for the universal prevalence of mental crack-up.

Yes, if we were childish in the past, I wish we could be children once again."

- Anita Loos.}


Sam, that's Samuel Clemens to you still-mortals, is morose. Seems Roland lost a follower, and he feels it's his fault. I told him all this computer journal needed was a women's touch.


Being Sam, he said, "Have at it, woman."


What artist could resist such an invitation? Besides I'm a bit morose today,too. No one seems to remember me.


"And who am I?," you say. Not you, too!

Great. You people are such a boost to a girl's morale.


Hmm, who am I? Let's just say you're lucky I'm not Plato or Freud. You'd get such an answer it would put you to sleep in an eyeblink.


Ever hear of GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES? I wrote it back in 1926, its 1200 first edition copies selling out by noon of the day of its publication. The second edition numbered 65,000.


By 1966, there were 45 more editions, and the whole world was reading my book. Though some were downright party-poopers about it :


When the book reached Russia,


I was told by our then Ambassador, William Bullitt,


that the Soviet authorities embraced it as evidence of the exploitation of helpless female blondes by predatory magnates of the capitalistic system.


As such, the book had a wide sale, but Russia never sent me any royalties,


which seems rather like the exploitation of a helpless brunette author by a predatory Soviet regime.


Men! You can't live with them. And there're too many to kill.


Oh, there's a right way to pronounce my name, but it's too much trouble to correct everyone. So I pronounce it Luce. You might as well, too.


If you girls and boys are lucky, I'll drop by again and teach you a few tricks ... writing tricks. The other kinds you'll have to pick up on your own.


It's more fun that way. And remember : gentlemen may prefer blondes, but they marry brunettes.
***

ANITA LOOS_YOU CAN'T KEEP A BAD GHOST DOWN_ GHOST OF A CHANCE Interlude

{"Like cheap booze, you can't keep a bad ghost down."
- Anita Loos, ghost.}

All your glowing comments about my article I posted on the anniversary of my death made this down ghost feel up.

And let me tell you :

that's the first time this girl has been felt up by strangers in a long time.

No howls from the feminists, please. The trouble with the Women's Liberationists is that they keep getting up on soapboxes

and proclaiming women are brighter than men.

Which is true,

but it should be kept quiet, or it ruins the whole racket.

But I am pleased by VR's comment that she, too, has the same frame of mind as I do about our last names.

My brother, Clifford, would painstakingly correct anyone who mispronounced our name. I never cared what people called me.

So my brother was always Dr. 'Lohse' while I became Miss 'Loose.'

Which was fitting since to survive in the madness that was Hollywood in the 1920's, I had to play it fast and loose.

Hollywood was insane then. To place in the limelight a great number of people who ordinarily would be chambermaids and chauffeurs,

and give them unlimited power and wealth, was bound to produce lively results.

But Fate keeps on happening. And insanity has apparently become the norm in Hollywood.

Still and all, this is Roland's blog, and he likes to help out his fellow writers. Luckily for you, I do, too.

In fact, I'm going to give you a way never to be stuck for what to write next ever again.

Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? And here I am not even running for political office.

It relates to a trick I learned to lose weight : you always leave the table hungry.

You may not know this, but it takes a bite of food a half hour to make it down all those intestinal highways and byways to your stomach.

Eat til you feel full, and 30 minutes later, you'll feel over-stuffed -- because that is what you are.

In like manner, when you're writing and going good,

when you know what's going to happen next,

Stop.

If you do that every day when you're writing your masterpiece, you will never be stuck.

Don't think or worry about the next scene. This way your subconscious will work out all sorts of nifty details as you go about the rest of your day's activities.

Consciously think about what you will write next, and you'll be tired before you start.

It's like staring at the brooding, silent phone, willing it to ring, thinking about that damn man who won't call.

By the time he does call, you're so tired of waiting and out of sorts, you haven't the wit or the patience to put him down like the sick dog he is.

Now, this trick won't make you rich, but wanting to be rich is all too human and all too useless.

There is a serious defect in the thinking of someone who wants --

more than anything else --

to become rich.

As long as they don't have the money, it'll seem like a worthwhile goal.

Once they do, they'll understand how important other things are --

Like enjoying each breath you breathe, the taste of that luscious strawberry, each light caress of your lover's fingertips on your cheek --

all those things I took for granted,

until I died.

Don't you be like me, girls. Please.

Well, maybe just a little bit. "Naughty" can have its own rewards.
***
Speaking of naughty ...

take a peek into the world in which I grew up :

WILLIAM FAULKNER'S GHOST_WHERE WE RUN INTO TROUBLE_GHOST OF A CHANCE Interlude

{"Read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.

Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master.

Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window and start again wiser."

-William Faulkner.}

William Faulkner, ghost, here :

Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing :

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

And to work well you must write with the embers of truth stinging your eyes.

You can have 13 people looking at a black bird and none of them will get it right. No one individual can look at truth.

Even simple truth. Look deep enough, and the simplicity disappears in the murky depths.

Truth blinds you. It is too much for one set of perceptions to take in. To a man with rose-tinted glasses, the whole world is rose.

And so it is with the writer looking at Man.

We call ourselves Homo Sapien, the reasoning animal. But Man is not made of reason.

A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired, but then time is its own misfortune as well.


And so all human behavior is unpredictable. Considering Man's fragility and the ramshackle universe he functions in, how could it be otherwise?

So how does that affect you as a writer?

1) The writer must not set himself up as judge :

He must focus on action, the character's behavior. Maybe your protagonist, like so many people, has no concept of morality,

only an integrity to hold always to what he believes to be facts and truths of the human condition.

2) The character does what his nature dictates.

He acts not as the writer would, not as a man should do, but what he will do -- maybe what he can't help but do. Which leads me to my greatest fear :

3) I fear that Man is losing his individualism, his sense of self, in doing what the herd does in order to stay safe.

Which is why I do not belong to anything besides the Human Race, and I try to be a first rate member of that.

4) You are first rate as a human being and a writer if :

you do the best you can with what talents you have to make something positive that wasn't there yesterday.

How do you do that you ask :

The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. And he makes his home of the stones of his efforts.

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home until I realized that home to a writer is where his mind, his heart is.

5) Most men are a little better than their circumstances give them a chance to be. Strive to thrive where you are. "How?" you ask again. And I will tell you :

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything good.

You have to have courage. Courage is not so hard to have in writing if you remember that :

All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection.

6) I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. If I could write all my work again, I'm convinced I could do it better.

This is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps working, trying again: he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off.

Of course he won't. Which leads us to the next point.

7) The phenomenon of writing is its hermaphroditism:

the principles of victory and of defeat inhabit the same body

and the necessary opponent, the blank page, is merely the bed he self-exhausts on.

8) You can learn writing, but you cannot teach it. A paradox but true despite that.

And what have I learned from my novels?

I learned how to approach language, words:

not with seriousness so much as an essayist does,

but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite;

even with joy, as you approach women: perhaps with the same secretly unscrupulous intentions.

Are you a writer? Really? Then, what are you doing about it? Go, write. And remember :

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.

And that's why a dream is not a very safe thing to be near...

I know; I had one once.

It's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough,

somebody is going to be hurt. But if it's a good dream, it's worth it.
***
A little humor icing on this literary cake :


*** TOMORROW : ANITA LOOS IS BACK in YOU CAN'T KEEP A BAD GHOST DOWN.

GHOST OF ANITA LOOS HERE_GHOST OF A CHANCE Interlude

{"Today there are no fairy tales for us to believe in,

and this is possibly a reason for the universal prevalence of mental crack-up.

Yes, if we were childish in the past, I wish we could be children once again."

- Anita Loos.}


Sam, that's Samuel Clemens to you still-mortals, is morose. Seems no one is visiting this blog anymore. I told him it needed a women's touch.


Being Sam, he said, "Have at it, woman."


What artist could resist such an invitation? Besides I'm a bit morose today, too. I died on this date in 1981.


"And who am I?," you say. Great. You people are such a boost to a girl's morale.


Hmm, who am I? Let's just say you're lucky I'm not Plato or Freud. You'd get such an answer it would put you to sleep in an eyeblink.


Ever hear of GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES? I wrote it back in 1926, its 1200 first edition copies selling out by noon of the day of its publication. The second edition numbered 65,000.


By 1966, there were 45 more editions, and the whole world was reading my book. Though some were downright party-poopers about it :


When the book reached Russia,


I was told by our then Ambassador, William Bullitt,


that the Soviet authorities embraced it as evidence of the exploitation of helpless female blondes by predatory magnates of the capitalistic system.


As such, the book had a wide sale, but Russia never sent me any royalties,


which seems rather like the exploitation of a helpless brunette author by a predatory Soviet regime.


Men! You can't live with them. And there're too many to kill.


Oh, there's a right way to pronounce my name, but it's too much trouble to correct everyone. So I pronounce it Luce. You might as well, too.


If you girls and boys are lucky, I'll drop by again and teach you a few tricks ... writing tricks. The other kinds you'll have to pick up on your own.


It's more fun that way. And remember : gentlemen may prefer blondes, but they marry brunettes.
***