“One cannot accomplish anything without fanaticism.”
~ Eva Peron, b. 7 May 1919
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George Clooney (b. May 6th): “I’m really white trash.”
6 May
“I’m really white trash.”
~ George Clooney, b. 6 May 1961
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Tammy Wynette (b. May 5th): “It’s hard giving all your love to just one man.”
5 May
“Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman giving all your love to just one man.”
~ Tammy Wynette, b. 5 May 1942
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Audrey Hepburn (b. May 4th): “I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.”
4 May
“I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.”
~ Audrey Hepburn, b. 4 May 1929
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Great Expectorations, by Dr. Charles Dickens (humor)
2 MayA young man of no prospects goes to the big City where, thanks to poor urban planning and non-existent labor rights, he suffers a multitude of bronchial infections brought on by smoke, pollution, fungus and virus.
Pip, an orphan of poor prospects, can’t complete his apprenticeship in a blacksmith shop because of an allergy to horseshit. His patron uncle sends him to London to live with the reclusive Miss Havisham who, jilted many years ago on her wedding day, still wears her bridal gown. Her wedding cake, which she’s saved all these years, has turned to mold and infected the entire house.
Pip falls in love with Estella, a beautiful young girl with a phlegmy cough. Pip has a nasty reaction to the fungus in the house and develops a bronchial infection whose coughing nearly turns his lungs inside out. Miss Havisham takes an interest in Pip’s future and introduces him to better society. In their company, Pip takes up smoking, which further aggravates his cough. Some of his newfound friends take to calling him “Spit”. When his sister dies of coal cough, a common ailment among residents of poorly-ventilated homes, Pip goes home for her funeral.
Returning to London, he’s approached by the convict Magwitch whom he’d helped escape from chains many years ago. Magwitch, who’s made a fortune running an opium den in Australia, is back in England seeking medical attention for viral pneumonia, but wants to bequeath part of his fortune to Pip. Soon after, Pip learns that Miss Havisham has been secretly planning to marry his beloved Estella off to a rival suitor, and they quarrel bitterly. Miss Havisham’s dress catches on fire and Pip is only able to save her by ripping her dress off. Exposed, Miss Havisham is traumatized and falls into a catatonic state. Magwitch is captured by the police and sentenced to die.
While visiting him in his damp prison cell, Pip develops an allergic reaction to moldy rodent droppings, and falls seriously ill. He spends a month in hospital, wracked by violent coughs, filling spittoons with fragments of his ravaged lungs. When he recovers enough to travel, Pip relocates to the dry climate of Cairo for eleven years. When he returns to London a rich man, he finds Estella now a widow with a mild case of whooping cough, and he rekindles their friendship by gifting her with a family-size bottle of expectorant.
David Beckham (b. May 2nd): “I always wanted to be a hairdresser.”
2 May
“I always wanted to be a hairdresser.”
~ David Beckham, b. 2 May 1975
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Ian Rankin (b. April 28): “Most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up.”
28 Apr
Ian Rankin, born 28 April 1960, is a Scottish crime writer. His Rebus books have been translated into 22 languages and are bestsellers on several continents. He has won four Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards, an Edgar Award, and many others. Rankin is also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Abertay, St Andrews, and Edinburgh.
Quotes:
- I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We’re still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.
- I don’t have many friends. It’s not because I’m a misanthrope. It’s because I’m reserved. I’m self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I’m writing my books.
- I think writers have to be proactive: they’ve got to use new technology and social media. Yes, it’s hard to get noticed by traditional publishers, but there’s a great deal of opportunity out there if you’ve got the right story.
- I’ve always written. At the age of six or seven, I would get sheets of A4 paper and fold them in half, cut the edges to make a little eight-page booklet, break it up into squares and put in little stick men with little speech bubbles, and I’d have a spy story, a space story and a football story.
- A lot of writers, especially crime writers, have an image that we think we’re trying to keep up with. You’ve got to be seen as dark and slightly dangerous. But I’m not like that and I’ve realised that I don’t need to put that on. People will buy the books whether they see a photo of you dressed in black or not.
On Writing:
I can’t write a novel when I’m travelling, but I can revise or edit, send emails and resolve plot problems. I’m envious of writers who can work on their books when they’re travelling, but I need my home comforts and certitudes – coffee, music, biscuits. I need to be in my office. It’s where I get to play God.
I’ll start with coffee and the papers, then maybe move on to emails. But eventually I’ll knuckle down. I have an office of sorts in my house. There will be music on the hi-fi, and I’ll sit on the sofa (if mulling), or at one desk (if writing longhand notes) or the other (if typing on to my laptop). My writing computer isn’t exactly state of the art – it can’t even access the internet – but I’ve written my last seven or eight novels on it, and it seems to work fine.
10 Rules:
- Read lots.
- Write lots.
- Learn to be self-critical.
- Learn what criticism to accept.
- Be persistent.
- Have a story worth telling.
- Don’t give up.
- Know the market.
- Get lucky.
- Stay lucky.
Mary Wollstonecraft (b. April 27): “It is vain to expect virtue from women until they are independent of men.”
27 Apr
Mary Wollstonecraft, born 27 April 1759 and died 10 September 1797, was an eighteenth-century English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. She wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children’s book. She is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her daughter, Mary Shelley, wrote Frankenstein.
Five Quotes:
- The beginning is always today.
- Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.
- It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.
- My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.
- It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust – ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out, which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable – and life is more than a dream.
Anita Loos (b. April 26): “I love high style in low company.”
26 Apr
Anita Loos (born 26 April 1889, died 18 August 1981) was an American screenwriter, playwright and author, best known for her blockbuster comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Nine Quotes:
- Fate keeps on happening.
- Memory is more indelible than ink.
- I’ve always loved high style in low company.
- It isn’t that gentlemen really prefer blondes, it’s just that we look dumber.
- A kiss on the hand may feel very, very good, but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever.
- On a plane you can pick up more and better people than on any other public conveyance since the stagecoach.
- The rarest of all things in American life is charm. We spend billions every year manufacturing fake charm that goes under the heading of public relations. Without it, America would be grim indeed.
- 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 – and have always been.
- I can never take for granted the euphoria produced by a cup of coffee. I’m grateful every day that it isn’t banned as a drug, that I don’t have to buy it from a pusher, that its cost is minimal and there’s no need to increase the intake. I can count on its stimulation 365 mornings every year. And thanks to the magic in a cup of coffee, I’m able to plunge into a whole day’s cheerful thinking.
Sue Grafton (b. April 24): “Ideas are easy. It’s their execution that separates the sheep from the goats.”
24 Apr
Sue Grafton, born 24th April 1940, is an American crime writer. She is best known as the author of the ‘alphabet series’, starting with “A” Is for Alibi. The books feature private investigator Kinsey Millhone in the fictional city of Santa Teresa, California. Grafton is the daughter of detective novelist C. W. Grafton. She wrote screenplays for television movies before she became a novelist.
Quotes on writing:
- Ideas are easy. It’s the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.
- I focus on the writing and let the rest of the process take care of itself. I’ve learned to trust my own instincts and I’ve also learned to take risks.
- I write letters to my right brain all the time. They’re just little notes. And right brain, who likes to get little notes from me, will often come through within a day or two.
- We all need to look into the dark side of our nature – that’s where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we’re busy denying.
- I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I’ve never stopped writing since. Of the first seven novels I wrote, numbers four and five were published. Numbers one, two, three, six, and seven, have never seen the light of day…and rightly so. The eighth novel I wrote was ‘A’ IS FOR ALIBI.
- I’m a writer by default. I think it is in my blood and in my bones. As I was growing up, women could be secretaries, nurses, ballerinas or airline stewardesses and I’m squeamish so there went my nursing career. I started writing early in my life as a way of surviving and my way of processing rage, grief and confusion. Now it is just what I do because I love it.
- I think with the mystery novel you have to know where you’re going, but not in any great detailed sense. I generally know whodunit, who died, and what the motive for the crime was. Then I have to figure out what I call the angle of attack. In other words, how do you cut into the story? Where does the story begin? What’s relevant in that first line or paragraph from the reader’s point of view? And I have to figure out who hires Kinsey Millhone, and what she’s hired to do.
- For one thing the mystery novel is a very elegant, delicate, highly structured form. You need to know how to plot, how to structure a story, you need to understand how to make a character work. People who start writing and think they can start with the mystery novel are often defeated before they put that first word on the page. So my advice is to learn your craft with mainstream fiction, where you’re not as stringently challenged and then come to the mystery when you’ve acquired some of the proficiencies that you need.
- I’m usually at my desk by 8:30 or 9:00. I like a tidy office because I find messes distracting. Being disorganized wastes time. I keep journals for every novel I write, and I start my workday by logging in, talking to myself about where I am in a novel and how I feel. I focus on the scene or story moves coming up. I worry about pacing and suspense. I revise. I stop sometimes and consult my research library, which is packed with books about crime and law enforcement. If I’m stuck, I call on the small army of experts who assist with each book. I break for a brief lunch and then work another couple of hours. Most days, I walk three to five miles when I’ve finished writing. I need the stress relief and fresh air.
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