So, for the last day of BEDA, I thought I would do something I did on Christmas Eve. Namely, I blogged for MANY HOURS, answering questions and giving things away on a rolling basis. I’m doing this today from noon to six.
So this blog will change ALL DAY LONG. Keep checking back to find answers to questions and maybe catch a SPONTANEOUS Scarlett giveaway!
This morning, I went down my street to buy something and I noticed that the house next to my apartment building, smack in the middle of the street . . . was gone. GONE. I was out yesterday, and they TOOK IT AWAY. Which means that we must start the day on this musical note, with Madness, one of the all-time most awesome bands, singing about their house in the middle of the street:
I look forward to your QUESTIONS. See you SOON.
QUESTION #1
Kali asks: When are you going to TRAPEZE SCHOOL? And can we come with you? I think we should have a small gathering in which we go together. Moral support and the likes.
The current plan is that I will be going around the time of BEA (Book Expo America), which is a massive publishing event here in New York. This is because my agent wants to watch. But because I'm not TOTALLY stupid, I have enlisted someone who is POSSIBLY AS SCARED AS I AM to come with me. Yes, I will be taking Twilight Boy Kaleb Nation up to the platform with me. As the scheduling firms up and things are put into place, I will update on this. TRUST ME. I will be talking about it ALL THE TIME. I don't actually know if people can go. It's a private school. I'll talk to them. But WHO WOULD COME TO THAT???
QUESTION #2
Hilary asks: As a fellow catholic school girl and someone from the Philly suburbs, how do you give a class presentation WITHOUT FREAKING OUT?!
The important thing to remember about class presentations is that pretty much no one in the entire class cares what you are saying. Everyone is: a). freaking out for the presentation THEY are about to give, b). recovering from giving a presentation, or c). sleeping with their eyes open.
The only exceptions to this rule are:
YOUR FRIENDS: Who are watching to make sure you survive THE GRADE OBSESSED: Who think everything is a competition THE PERKY PEOPLE WHO PAY ATTENTION TO EVERYTHING: Who are far too awake THE PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T FINISHED PREPARING: Who are watching you for hints THE EVIL: Who like to mess with people at the front of the class YOUR TEACHER
Looking at that list, I realize that in fact MANY people are watching, all with different motives. I offer three suggestions:
1. Go early 2. Make it short 3. Show a video/give out candy whenever possible
That's just the survival plan. If you are asking how to give a presentation with STYLE, that is a different matter! Is that what you are asking?
QUESTION #3
TiffanySchmidt asks: My 6th graders requested ABBA for writing music. They call it: "the musical form of caffeine" Wonder where they got that? ;)
Some days I truly feel like my work is done.
QUESTION #4
Death Pixie asks: As an author, how do you react to criticism especially when the critic is another author??
It's actually pretty rare (in my experience) that another author offers criticism.* Not to your face, anyway. Unless they are writing a formal review with a byline, just slamming your book randomly is pretty bad form. At least, in my world. People may be saying ALL KINDS of things about your book in private that you will never know. And it's really much better that way.
But reviews, in general? Honestly, it's best not to give them much time. People have opinions about everything. Reviews are just some specific people writing down some specific opinions. Reviewers themselves vary wildly as well. You don’t need to take a test or anything to be a reviewer. Depending on where you are reviewing, it might not be that hard at all to get the job. I was hired as a reviewer in grad school. They gave me $50 and a book and I used it as a chance to show off and take out my frustrations, which is pretty common. Some reviewers are excellent. Some reviewers are really bad. Some reviewers are great, but just aren't right for your book. Some reviewers praise your book unfairly, or dismiss it because they are having a bad day. Good reviewers write poor reviews sometimes, and really awful reviewers occasionally hit the nail on the head.
No matter what, it’s a lot of noise. You can’t listen to what everyone thinks. You just can’t. You’ll go insane. It won’t help you. (I discussed this once here.) You have to learn who to listen to, and how to trust yourself and your own voice.
Think about it: what if you asked a hundred people to give opinions on what you are wearing today. A hundred totally random, opinionated people who like to tell other people what they think. You’d get a hundred or so different reports. Some people would be nice. Some people would just be mean because that’s how they get their fun. Some people would try to “help” you by suggesting things that THEY would wear, things that you don’t like and don’t have and wouldn’t suit you anyway. What would you do with all of that information? You’d go and hide under your bed. Because that much random input is meaningless. You couldn’t put on an outfit that would please them ALL. It’s UNPOSSIBLE!
It’s useless when too many people are talking.
Which doesn’t mean to say that you (and by you, I mean me) ignore what everyone says about your book. It means that you just have to be very selective in what moves you, and you have to have confidence in what you are doing, and learn to find useful pieces of information in all of the things being thrown at you.
That being said . . . if you like Suite Scarlett, why not take the time right now to leave a nice review here or here? "But why?" you ask. "You just said it was TOO MUCH!"
For the author, it is. But for people looking for things to read, your positive recommendation is VERY VALUABLE! I am ENORMOUSLY grateful when people leave nice reviews. And if you didn't like the book, well, you can say that too. But you can also just go HERE instead!
I'm in the mood to give out a book soon. Very soon. I should propose a challenge of some sort to win it . . .
*thinks*
OKAY . . . FIRST prize giveaway of the day! FIRST one! It's a SIGNED SCARLETT to a random commenter. I'll choose at 4:30 (that's one hour and 15 minutes from NOW). So ASK MORE QUESTIONS!
I'll make the next challenge into an actual challenge. But for now, it's time to just give away a Scarlett to celebrate.
QUESTION #5
brnh asks: Any suggestions for making OUR last post of BEDA special? I've reached a blogging lull and could use the help...
Here are just a FEW things you can do:
1. Go and read some BEDA blogs at random. Write a FULL RESPONSE to someone you don't know. 2. Write a letter to me or a review of Suite Scarlett. I WILL READ IT IF YOU SEND ME THE LINK VIA E-MAIL. 3. Make up a recipe. Test it out. It does not have to be GOOD. 4. Write some FAN FICTION. 5. Write an open letter to something of yours that doesn't work right. Tell it off.
QUESTION #6
Tobias asks: Should I grow a beard?
This is really up to you, Tobias. I have to admit that I am not personally a fan of beards. Oh sure, sometimes I see one that looks right. But in general, I admire clean-shavenness. I think it makes you guys seem very, very clever, the way you debeard yourselves! I like a nice CHIN. I can't help it. It is just the way I am. My personal preferences come through.
Why not ask yourself this question: WHAT WOULD JOHN BARROWMAN DO?
[NEWSBREAK! It looks like someone read what I wrote above and left a new nice review of Scarlett on Amazon! I LOVE YOU! In fact, if you leave a nice review of Scarlett on Amazon or BN, I will MARRY YOU. That's right. MARRY YOU. Think of the joy we will experience together!]
Okay . . .
QUESTION #7
rubber ducky asks: The guy I have a crush on forgot my name today. I am trying to be optimistic and saying it's because he only knows my nickname. Am I delusional?
This is the BEST POSSIBLE NEWS! You see, when you REALLY LIKE someone, you sometimes lose control of some of the finer functions of your mind. Which is why conversations like this happen. Say you're working at, oh, I don't know . . . Starbucks. And the person who you like comes in for a coffee.
PERSON WHO IS LIKED: Hi. YOU: *blank stare* PWIL: Um . . . YOU: (overly loud) Oh HI! HI!!!!!!!!!!! PWIL: Can I have a grande latte? YOU: What? PWIL: Can I have a grande latte? YOU: What? PWIL: Can I have a . . . YOU: OH MY GOD! I thought you said GRANDMA! *burst of inappropriate laughter* Yeah. I thought you said . . . um, what? Hi, by the way! PWIL: Hi. Can I have a grande latte? YOU: That . . . is my favorite drink. PWIL: Oh really? YOU: Yes. PWIL: Can I have one? YOU: What? PWIL: A grande latte. YOU: Oh, right! *more laughter* Sure. SURE! Let me just. *random hitting of keys, accidentally charge $49.99* Oh, um . . . forget that! It's on me! What's your nam . . . oh, I know your name. I mean, I don't, like whisper it to myself at night before I go to sleep or anything! PWIL: *just kind of looks at you* YOU: *panic* PWIL: *just kind of looks at you* YOU: Any . . . pastry? PWIL: I'm good. YOU: YEAH you are! PWIL: *just stares at you* YOU: So . . . PWIL: Can I have my coffee? YOU: What?
So, not worry, Rubber Ducky! I have no doubt that the person in question was actually singing this to himself in his head:
[NEWSFLASH! The first WINNER of TODAY is Mrs.JasperHale08. Send an ADDRESS! Another book will be given away SHORTLY! But I think I will make it MORE CHALLENGING. Ideas?]
[SONG BREAK]
I think we need some more Madness, don't you? Here's another one of their MOST AWESOME SONGS. I dedicate it to YOU.
QUESTION #8
Laura asks: I am in a Creative Writing class full of people who are clearly better than me. It is embarrassing to read my stuff out loud. And too late to drop the class. Although the class is in many ways fun I leave it feeling like a untalented person. What should I do?
First of all, one of the things about loosey-goosey classes like creative writing is that you honestly CAN'T FAIL. Well, you can, but you kind of have to make an effort to do so. For example . . . setting fire to the building. That might do it. But even then, some teachers will be into that.
And this feeling of "everyone is better than me" is something a lot of people experience when it comes to their writing. It sometimes has nothing to do with reality, and everything to do with your own fear. NO, REALLY. I have heard amazing, famous writers cry out, "I suck. I can't write. I should just KILL MYSELF."
So don't give up on the class. Push through. If necessary, make the pushing through THE ENTIRE POINT!
[NEWSFLASH]
Okay, I REALLY HAVE TO PUT ON PANTS SOON. I know, I know. It goes against everything I stand for, but I am going out to one of those places where pants are required. Or skirts. I will probably wear a skirt. Or a TOGA.
Actually, if you are stalking me (and HELLO if you are! I hope you liked those things I left in the trash for you!) . . . I am going to this tonight. It's a benefit for 826NYC, which is an awesome writing program.
I think what I will DO is leave a SERIES OF CHALLENGES on this blog shortly. Then, when I return later tonight, I will look at the results and answer a few more questions.
Also, to those of you who wrote to say you will miss my daily posts . . . THANK YOU! And also, I am cooking up something NEW and potentially MORE STUPID.
QUESTION #9
JD asks: Maureen, what do you do to spice up a desperately boring blog?
Why not throw in a few threats? It worked for the Zodiac Killer. I mean, what was the Zodiac Killer if not just a really determined blogger in the days before blogging?** He also used KOOKY SYMBOLS, and then went out and killed lots of people . . .
*thinks this over*
OR.
Or, you could give stuff away! Like this!
All right . . . I have to go out for a few hours, but when I come back, I will conclude this post! I leave THREE CHALLENGES and chances for you to WIN!
1. Challenge one: Best question. Leave it in the comments. This is pretty much like normal, I know. But today is the last day of BEDA, and I MUST GIVE OUT SOME PRIZES to YOU!
2. SURPRISE ME. You have about six hours. I have many ways of being reached, and many little TENDRILS of myself to surprise. Do something on Twitter, or on this blog, or the Ning, or some other site. I don't want to give you any suggestions, because that would not SURPRISE me. But you have been CHALLENGED.
3. I will give an additional SPECIAL PRIZE to someone who has read Scarlett and leaves a review on the places I've linked to above. It will be a SPECIAL prize.
All right! See you around midnight OR SO! I am off to RAISE MONEY FOR WRITING PROGRAMS!
* I am assuming you mean flat-out negative remarks here. If someone I respect gives me comments I can use, then I'm very happy. ** I guess the answer is: He was a crazy, crazy, crazy serial killer.
CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? This is the 29th day of BEDA. Twenty-nine days of straight blogging. There was a time that I thought this would kill me. And yet, here I am. I spoke at a library conference today, along with John Green and E. Lockhart, so I’m just getting this in under the wire, but I MADE IT!
Let’s get right to your questions.
NOLADawn says: my book (your ticket to TRAPEZE SCHOOL) arrived today!!! yippee!!!!
I have noticed that many of you have written in today to see that your BLOOD MONEY SCARLETTS (the ones you ordered to send me to the trapeze) have been arriving. I have exciting news! These first copies have something UNIQUE in them.
Digsbooks asks: You're going to put a $100 bill into each of them, aren't you?
It’s actually MORE VALUABLE than that.
There is an excerpt from Scarlett Fever in the back . . . except, IT’S WRONG. For some reason, the excerpt printed is kind of a random chunk of a MUCH EARLIER DRAFT, and it doesn’t appear in the book. (Not in that form, anyway.) It’s also kind of a bizarre selection—a snippet of conversation that really isn’t the kind of thing you excerpt. You get to see something I was working on, and changed. Something that was never for public consumption! This will be corrected in later printings, so the ones you buy now will have this error, and will be WORTH A LOT OF MONEY, like an Inverted Jenny!
Erin asks: my question refers to romeo and juliet: why were all people such BIG FAT IDIOTS back then?
This question suggests that fat idiocy is over. What’s Romeo and Juliet about, anyway? Romeo and Juliet, both teenagers, fall in love after meeting each other once and get really obsessed. They get SO obsessed that they have to marry each other AT ONCE. When their love is thwarted by outside forces, they end up putting their friends and families in danger because they are oblivious to everyone else’s problems. When threatened with separation, they become suicidal. I’ll give you a moment to think about that and see if it reminds you of anything.
By which I mean to say . . . it’s not really idiocy. It’s about obsessive first love.* Obsessive first love has always been with us and will always be with us. And obsessive first love . . . is often kind of . . . stupid? I have already flagged this as dating fail in a previous post. Romeo and Juliet are not a model you want to follow.
I know that some people really do fall in love with and stay with people they meet as teenagers. It DOES happen. But those successful couples generally weren’t threatening to do themselves in if the other person had to go away. And after the first rush faded, they put a lot of work into their relationship. But most people I know went through this rush of love several times and just learned to deal.
And you know that Romeo and Juliet’s friends thought they were being TOTALLY ANNOYING. This comes through in the play. Mercutio, in particular, is deeply annoyed by Romeo. And remember, Romeo met Juliet while he was obsessing over ANOTHER GIRL and Mercutio keeps trying to cheer him up and Romeo ignores him. (And he gets Mercutio killed in the bargain. Romeo’s a REALLY IRRITATING GUY to know.)
So basically, I’m saying that Romeo and Juliet—while idiots—are familiar idiots. And everyone is an idiot now and again. You get a big crush, you get stupid. If you haven’t gotten stupid yet, I am sure you know someone who has. Do you know that friend of yours who clings to their phone and checks for messages every fourteen seconds and can’t stop talking about their new significant other until you just want to beat them over the head and stuff them in the trunk of a car and drive them to the middle of nowhere just so they have no signal and just have to shut up for a second and get a grip? That’s Romeo and Juliet. It would be so much worse if they had phones and the internet. Except they probably wouldn’t have had to die, because they could have talked online and maybe made each other videos on Youtube. It would be a different play, I think. Possibly not as dramatic.
Look, just don’t kill yourself or get your friends killed. Is that SO MUCH TO ASK? And if you need help getting a grip, or if you need to help someone else get a grip, just come see me.
Cortney asks: I love the Big Book of Snakes. But what would you do if said guy pulled out his own Big Book of Snakes?
If this happens, you are MEANT TO BE TOGETHER.
luvs2dance asks: I like a guy, but he is a TOTAL player. He just makes me feel so good about myself, though. He tells me that he likes me, but then I just see him flirt with other girls. What should I do??!!
I am reminded of an old French saying: “A popsicle is delightful for one summer afternoon, but a wheel of cheese is forever (or at least for maybe 15 to 18 months, depending on the cheese).”
Now, the French don’t actually say that, but perhaps you see what I mean. Do you want a popsicle or a wheel of cheese? And if you go for the popsicle, will you be sorry when it’s gone? It really depends on what you want. If you REALLY like him, then I think you will only be hurt if you expect to become his one and only. And if someone hurts one of you, then I have to go and cut a b%^ch.
Of course, Abba have discussed this very issue. Listen to what they have to say:
Sebastian Goodnight said: Mo, On Dave "Dude, I cook n sh#!" Lieberman: Be assured. I will get you back. –Sebastian
Crap.
Erin asks: What do you do if the boy you like is a track and field god who is incessantly cool and you are not? And the other guy you like can't make up his mind? And the other guy is four inches shorter than you?
So there are THREE guys you like? I would put it to you that you should probably go with person number two, as you ALSO cannot make up your mind. This is not as sure a match as, say, someone who also has a Big Book of Snakes, but it is a kind of safe bet.
Actually, it’s not. I take it back. Every date you go on will be pure hell. “Where do you want to go?” “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?” “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?” “I don’t know . . .” UNTIL YOU DIE.
Guy #1 and Guy #3 both sound promising, but I’m going to say that you should go for Guy #3. Who cares how tall he is? Height is no measure of awesome. It’s only a measure of . . . well, height. Short guys are cool, and crazy, and they have a lot to prove. They can slip through smaller spaces than tall guys, they can hide in large boxes, and if they are REALLY short, they can even pop out of hats.** And that, my friend, is an excellent way to be.
You can be the Josephine to his Napoleon! The Katie to his Tom! The whoever Jon Stewart is married to to his Jon Stewart!
OKAY!
Tomorrow . . . is going to be HUGE. I’m going to be liveblogging pretty much all day, answering questions that come in in the comments. Let’s end BEDA right! See you TOMORROW!
* Well, it’s about many things, but certainly obsessive love is at the center of the story. ** Depending on the style of hat. Like, one of those Lincoln hats? A short guy can for sure pop out of one of those.
Melissa asks: Maureen! What happens on Friday when Blog Every Day April is over???
This is an excellent question. While BEDA may be ending on Thursday, very little will really change. The Ning is permanent! The only thing that changes is that I, personally, won’t be blogging every single day. I need time to do other things, and I just need to spend a least a LITTLE time away from my computer. However! Blogging every day in April has been excellent conditioning for me. I’m blogging MUCH FASTER now. So I’ll still be posting quite a lot, I imagine a few times a week. I will still be answering questions and giving out stuff and helping you in ANY WAY I CAN.
People have also been asking if I’ll do this again. I think it’s likely. I also think I might try to work up a NEW project for this summer . . . something ELSE we can all do. I am always up to something. I have a few ideas.
More important, though, is what it means for you. If you’ve started blogging during this month, if you’ve made friends . . . keep that going. If you have a BEDA Buddy, continue on reading each other’s blogs! There’s no reason to stop AT ALL!
Also, I just want to point out that a few BEDA-ers have started the BEDA Awards on the Ning! Check it out!
And if you have any suggestions about what we should do for the last day of BEDA, let me know!
omgsquid asks: I'm wondering what size feet you have?
Women’s 8.5, American size. Also, my feet are flat. Totally and utterly flat.
SIXella asks: I have a question: What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex?
I am a very traditional girl. I just use a gun.
Whyohyou says: I sat on my little sister's birthday cake and ruined my jeans.
Not a question. But I really need to know how this happened.
Raine asks: So. I have heard whispers you and John Green appeared on a Food Network show. It was Molto Mario, wasn't it? Will you please prehaps... share a video? Or at least confirm that it was Molto Mario? The public demands an answer.
It wasn’t John Green. It was ANOTHER friend of mine named John, but for the purposes of simplicity, we will call him Sebastian Goodnight. And it wasn’t Molto Mario—it was a show called Good Deal with Dave Lieberman. Someone who knew of my obsession with cooking shows asked me if I wanted to be in the audience for one. I said yes. I dragged Sebastian along under the promise that we would never be on camera and would just get to watch the show being taped and try the food. What ACTUALLY happened is that we were the ONLY people on the show, aside from Dave and Dave’s actual friend from Yale, and we were going to be “Dave’s other friends who are meeting him for a picnic.” The show featured just the four of us, and it was shot at a brewery, and they kept making us drink and sniff things and bit food over and over. It was all very surreal. Sebastian STILL wants to kill me for that, but I honestly didn’t know we were going to be FEATURED PLAYERS and have to pretend to know the guy.
hilly_wa asks: what do i do when a boy i dont like keeps hitting on me?
Well, Hilly-wa, first . . . be flattered. It is very nice when someone likes you. Some people have a hard time expressing this.
That being said, there sometimes comes a point when you have to let someone know that they really have to stop. There are a LOT of ways to do this. If you want to be friends with the person, then you really have to talk to them and be nice, but honest, so you can get on with your friendship.
If you don’t plan on being friends with the person, really, can I recommend the Big Book of Snakes approach? It takes a little bit of work, but once you’ve done it, it will come in handy again and again! And you can do this for less than $20. In fact, you might be able to make this with materials that are already around your own house! Here’s how it’s done.
1. Get a notebook or scrapbook of some kind. Any kind of blank book with do. Go with your instinct—fancy scrapbook, art pad, flowery, photo album, Jonas Brothers notebook, whatever feels right.
2. Make a cover for it that indicates that this is YOUR Big Book of Snakes. Again, be creative! Write it in colorful marker, stencil it in, use stamp art, cut letters out of newspapers in a ransom-note style. Make it your own.
3. Now comes the fun part! It is time to fill your big book of snakes! Find some old magazines, go to the library and make photocopies, print them out from the internet. Wherever you can find them. Get a bunch of them. They don’t even have to be real snakes. Ideally, you should have some cartoon snakes, or pictures of stuffed animal snakes. Here’s the critical step: you must include one or two pictures of things THAT ARE NOT SNAKES AT ALL. Pictures of sofas, fire hydrants, cement blocks, trees, cats, sweaters . . . these are all good.
4. Now it’s time to assemble your book! Make sure that the first several pictures are all the snake pictures and that the non-snake pictures come a few pages in. This will make for a wonderful surprise! And feel free to write in captions, preferably in spidery, tight handwriting that crowds the page. Here’s are just two sample captions to get you started:
I really like these snakes they live in the jungle, I wish I lived in the jungle, sometimes I dream about these snakes eating everyone I know lol! No not really but okay kind of. They are not poisonous but I wish they were. RWAR!
This is a south American python, native to Canada. It lives in fruit trees and eats seven times its weight every hour. Mostly it eats mice but sometimes it will eat other snakies like it. It likes crackers too. Yay! I like crackers.
You get the idea, I am sure.
Now that you’ve made your Big Book of Snakes, you are ready to go! When the person hits on you again, say, “I have something I really want to show you. I think you’ll like it. It’s kind of . . . I don’t know . . . personal. Kind of sentimental. I feel I can show it to you. I think you’d really get it. I think you’re just like me.”
They are likely to accept. Agree to meet them somewhere nice and public—coffee shop, mall, something like that. All you have left to do is bring along the Big Book of Snakes. Treat it with great reverence. Flip through it slowly. Make sure they see ALL of your snakes.
Snowaeris asks: What do you suggest for those of us with very large final papers who are getting writer's block (and procrastinating by reading BEDA Blogs)?
There is an expression, “Hunger is the best sauce.” I have a corollary: “Deadlines are the greatest inspiration.”
No great paper was ever written on a timely schedule. Forget everything the dweebs in the writing center* tell you about outlines and drafts and revisions. Forget about collecting up notes on your computer or carefully organized file cards which you lovingly arrange over the course of several weeks until they achieve a pleasing formation which you then use as the blueprint of the architecture of your prose. It makes me laugh just to write that sentence!
Great final papers are born of adrenaline and stink of desperation. Great final papers are the things you create because you don’t have quite enough time to fake your own death. Let’s go through the typical timeline of a final paper and see how YOU can achieve greatness for yourself!
WEEK ONE: Syllabus is given out. You see that, among many other books, you will be reading I, Wombat and The Hamster’s Tale. Being a dutiful and dedicated student, you immediately go to the bookstore and purchase these books. Someone is going to EARN that café coolatta today!
You are serious about learning!
WEEK THREE: This is the week for reading I, Wombat and The Hamster’s Tale. Because it is still early in the semester and you are in a sporting mood, you read half of I, Wombat and all of The Hamster’s Tale. (Because it is shorter, but amazingly, you forget the ending of the book as soon as you are done . . . and the beginning . . . and a good chunk of the middle. But the important part is that you read it, right? You physically HAD IT IN YOUR HANDS and flipped through it page by page and THAT is what college is all about.)
WEEK FIVE: Final paper questions are assigned, with the idea that you now have many, many weeks to reread, research, and plan for writing. You choose this question, because of the good work you put in during week three: “Compare and contrast the themes of I, Wombat and The Hamster’s Tale. What conclusions to your draw from the differing approaches? (25 pages, 95% of your grade)”
WEEKS 6-11: It’s not 100% clear what exactly goes on in weeks six through eleven. Clearly, at some point you went to the library. You’ve been using a book called “I, Wombat: A Critical View”** as a coaster for about three weeks now. Aside from that, it’s all a haze of Youtube videos and attempts at making grilled cheese sandwiches on your overactive radiator.*** All you know is that time has passed and it’s perhaps time to think about that paper that is now due in two weeks.
It is unclear what has transpired.
WEEK 12: “I’m serious,” you say to everyone around you. “I’m getting ready to go in for the long haul. Once I get all the supplies I need, I’m going to lock myself in and I’m NOT COMING OUT until the paper is DONE! Except to go to class, of course!” You’re going to need a lot, though. Coffee, protein bars, paper, pens, ramen noodles, ginko tea, some of those vitamin waters made from the smartberry . . . Oh, yes. Yours is the room of a SERIOUS SCHOLAR!
WEEK 13
MONDAY, MORNING: You can barely move around in your room, you’re so well prepared. You have no money left to buy anything else. You’ve spent it all. But wisely. Wisely. You’re just going to class today, and coming right back and getting to work. Paper’s due on Friday. You can write it in five days. That’s four pages a day.
MONDAY, AFTERNOON: Oh no! HIJACKED! It WAS the first summer-like day of the year, so you really did have to go and get milkshakes and sit in the sun for a little while. That will only help you later. You could probably have skipped those two hours of Mario Kart, but whatever.
MONDAY, EVENING: Well, you have to EAT, too. Paper will be started right after dinner.
MONDAY, 9pm: All right. This is where it BEGINS! This is where the magic happens. You just need to grab your copy of I, Wombat and . . . Where is I, Wombat? Oh no. Moocher from building across campus BORROWED I, Wombat weeks ago. Moocher must be called. Moocher is not picking up. OFF TO LIBRARY.
MONDAY, 10pm: Library all out of copies of I, Wombat. Moocher must be tracked down on foot.
MONDAY, 11:30: Moocher has been spotted! Moocher is sitting on south lawn, blowing bubbles in the dark and playing tambourine. Moocher is not dedicated like you. Bit of a hippie. Doesn’t believe in personal property, that kind of thing.
MONDAY, 11:45: Moocher is happy to see you! Wants to blow bubbles, play tambourine with you. No time for that! You need book. Moocher is sorry. Is not sure where book is. Are you sure you won’t blow some bubbles?
TUESDAY, 1:00am: Okay, Moocher has minor point. Bubbles and tambourine combination surprisingly satisfying. But enough is enough. Maybe book can be found online.
TUESDAY, 3:30am: Book is not online.
TUESDAY, 9:30am: Why did you ever sign up for the 9:30am session of “Important Rocks of Ireland”? What were you thinking? Nevermind. Will have to find copy of I, Wombat after class.
TUESDAY, 11am: Fifteen dollars for a new copy of I, Wombat? The system is corrupt! Back to room to read until 1:30.
TUESDAY, 5pm: Okay, you didn’t read. You had lunch before your next class. Must eat. But you are definitely not going to the dining hall for dinner. You are staying in and reading.
TUESDAY, 7:30pm: It was a relatively quick trip to the dining hall, all things considered. Now reading . . .
TUESDAY, 10:30pm: What the hell IS this book?
TUESDAY, 11:30pm: Feverishly consider other paper options. No, you committed weeks ago. Had to turn in slip of paper saying what your topic was, get approval. Is it too late to change? Examine class documentation minutely.
WEDNESDAY, 2:30am: It is too late to change. Also, turns out roommate HAD copy of I, Wombat. Roommate very smug. Roommate is engineering major. Never has to write a paper. Only has to build functioning robotic arm instead. SLACKER.
WEDNESDAY, 9:00am: Why did you ever sign up for 9am session of “Modern Perspectives on Modernism”? What were you thinking? Trudge, trudge, trudge off to class.
WEDNESDAY, 11am: Trudge, trudge, trudge back to room. You didn’t have enough money for a large latte. Had to get a coffee refill in someone’s borrowed eco-mug. Hope they washed it.
WEDNESDAY: 1pm: The Hamster’s Tale also insane, just slightly less so than I, Wombat. Type two paragraphs of notes that sort of sound like something. Off to “Folktale, Myth, Legend, Parable, and Story: A Cultural Perspective.”
WEDNESDAY, 3pm: Stroke of luck! Friend works at coffee bar in basement of math building. Will hook you up with leftover coffee when they close at 5. Totally worth waiting around for. Will just read in meantime, right outside, in the sun.
WEDNESDAY, 5:30pm: Okay, what is it about reading in the sun that makes you get all sleepy and dazed? Well, that doesn’t matter now, as you are the proud owner of at least two quarts of high-quality, slightly used coffee. You even got about two dozen of those fancy flavored creamers! Now, you are going to ROCK.
WEDNESDAY, 9:30pm: Oh yeah. You’ve been typing for four hours straight now. Eleven pages! Oh yeah. Oh YEAH! Maybe you should read this? No, no. Not yet. Not while you are on a roll! Time for more slightly used coffee and fancy creamer!
THURSDAY, 5:30am: Eighteen pages!!!! Everything is shaking a little bit. Confusion. Darkness. Heartbeat somewhat irregular.
THURSDAY, 9:00am: Must re-read genius work of last night.
THURSDAY, 9:30am: What the @%#^?
What . . . what IS this stuff?
THURSDAY, 12:30pm: Have come to the terrifying conclusion that only perhaps three pages of last night’s frenzy are in any way usable. What happened HERE? LOCK DOOR. WRITE.
THURSDAY, 8:30pm: NO I DON’T WANT FOOD. FOOD MAKES YOU SLOW.
THURSDAY, 10pm: Nine pages. NINE PAGES?!?!?!?!
THURSDAY, 11pm: An entire HOUR wasted playing with font size, spacing, calculating the exact time the paper needs to be sent off, and reading all the fine print on the guide sheet. Back to it, NOW, NOW, NOW!!!
FRIDAY, midnight: The day of the paper has now arrived. You are halfway done. It is customary to spend at least a few minutes berating yourself on letting this happen. But this part is boring, in the same way that all graduation speeches are boring. Skip ahead to the frenzy.
4am: Uncontrollable twitching. 12 pages.
8am: Strange euphoria. 14 pages.
10:30am: Stalled at 16 pages. Bang head on desk a few times.
1:30 pm: Could it be that you’re . . . done? Well, it’s 19 and a half pages, and you sort of had to get a little crazy in that last paragraph to get it over the line, but . . . .
1:45pm: Spellcheck. Print. Stare at paper in amazement. Rub it on face.
2:05pm: Step outside into sunshine, with 55 minutes to walk paper over. Most beautiful day you have ever seen. Moocher is on front step with his bubbles. Wants you to blow some with him and do an improvised dance. Why not? Why not, INDEED?
2:35pm: People love your dancing.
3:01pm: No. No. No. No. No. No. No, you did not just blow the deadline by a minute because you were bubble dancing with the Moocher. THIS IS NOT HOW IT ENDS FOR YOU!
3:02-3:14pm: Running, running, running, running . . . knocking over slow people, crashing through tour groups, running . . .
3:15-3:25pm: After great begging, gnashing of teeth, falling on knees, actual tears, assistant accepts paper. As you leave, you hear him joke that your professor isn’t picking them up until 5 and the 3 o’clock thing was just something he did as a trick to try to get them in a little sooner so he could leave for the weekend. EVERYONE IS SO LAZY!!!!
I hope this helps.
And the winners of the autographed copies of Eternally Yours: The Unauthorized Biography of Robert Pattinson, Savior of Wayward Hamsters by my friend Isabelle Adams are:
From the Ning: Mary Hadac From Blogger: bluebonnet21
Send in your addresses! More books will be given out later this week!
* I speak as a former dweeb of the writing center. ** This was someone else’s final paper. Final papers breed more final papers! It’s the cycle of life! *** I wasted half a semester trying to do this. Don’t bother. No matter how crazy the heat may be in your building, you can’t make a good grilled cheese on it.
CeCe asks: You are at a stop sign. Do you go right, or left?
I go STRAIGHT UP.
pugnacioun asks: MJ, I have two questions today: First, and shortest, how do you prefer people who follow your blog but do not personally know you address you? MJ, Maureen, Ms. Johnson, Queen of Sparkles? Second, and more verbose, there is a boy in my German class. I am quite enamored with him - however, I have no experience in the ways of love. I think there is potential here, but I have no idea how to tap into it. Can you help me?
1. I answer to anything. But I DO like the idea of having a title.
2. Of course I can help you. I have experience both in LOVE and in GERMAN CLASS. German, of course, is the language of love, and love born in a German class (or “jugendliche Liebe gebürtiger Germanclass”) is among the most precious forms.
I first learned this from many hundreds of hours of staring at my German textbooks, which were created by some complete maniacs in the 1970s and never updated, which largely featured depressive people weeping and playing guitars in their rooms, waiting by telephones in lederhosen for calls that never came, and going to discos where they would be forsaken (“verlassen”) by everyone they met.
This went against everything I understood about the Germans. Granted, I had learned everything I knew about the Germans from this video*:
Which doesn’t involve any weeping or being forsaken at all! Then I realized that this video was about Mozart, who was Austrian. The Austrians, from what I can tell, eat delicious pastries and write sonatas all day long. But they don’t teach Austrian class, now do they? No, we were stuck with Hans and Gisela, who just cried and strummed and wandered the streets in suicidal loops all day, occasionally stopping to buy some veal cutlets or play football. But they always did it totally alone (“ganz allein”).
Oh sure, every once in a while they would manage to ensnare someone equally miserable, and they would go out to the local café for a sausage (“Wurst”) and the soup of the day (“Tagessuppe”), but they would immediately start discussing the fact that there is no point to anything and drive each other to despair (“zur Verzweiflung treiben”). Which led directly back to more lederhosen-wearing, phone-call-waiting, guitar-playing, and weeping. “Was wird aus mir?” (“What will become of me?”) they would often cry. “Es ist immer so!” (“It’s always this way!”)
That being said, pugnacioun, I would Facebook friend him and take it from there!
Mush asks: My question is probably one you get all the time, but during your time playing Amy Gardner on West Wing, who was your favourite cast member? What? You're NOT Mary-Louise Parker? Well can she play you in the movie of your life maybe? I think she may be your long lost twin.
I used to get Selma Blair a lot. Now I’m getting Mary-Louise Parker. I always aspired to look like this, so I’m clearly way off base. Perhaps we can take a vote, just to get this issue settled once and for all. Mary-Louise Parker, Selma Blair, or [fill in other person here]?
JEM asks: are you ever planning on writing any sequels?
I already have. Scarlett Fever, the sequel to Suite Scarlett, is already done. And then, there will be a sequel to THAT, which I have JUST STARTED. As for my other books . . . *looks from side to side mysteriously* I cannot confirm or deny anything AT THIS TIME.
Karen asks: If you had to design the covers of your own books, what would they look like?
Like they had been created by focus groups of small children on painkillers. That’s if I made the cover at all. I have long been advocating covering my books in brown paper bag material with just the name of the book stamped on the front, and three crayons attached that you could use to draw your own and then eat when you were finished.
Gabby asks: Have you ever used your Poetic License to make up a word, besides beda?
Yes. I say “whycome” a lot. As in “Whycome have I no bananas?” My ultimate dream is to have my own point-counterpoint television show called “Whycome?/Whycome Not?”
Chris asks: Are you working on a new book? Please explain.
Yes, I am working on Scarlett 3 and one other book, but MOSTLY Scarlett 3. The reason for this is because Scarlett 3 comes after Scarlett 2, which is now complete.
Lindsay asks: MY question is, now that you're already trapezing, what (if anything) are you going to do for us if Scarlett becomes a bestseller?
I’ll take suggestions on this one, and if Scarlett DOES become a bestseller, then I will complete ONE of them.
Teyrn asks: Maureen, will you ever learn?!
It seems doubtful. Joe Friedl asks: Maureen Johnson, how do I get Maureen Johnson to like me?
Just by BEING YOU. Also, buying my book, giving me shiny objects, and killing off all my other friends so I am left with you as the only option . . . all viable tactics.
Allison Taylor asks: Is Zac Effron still eating hamsters (about to go see 17 again)?
I’ve seen no evidence to the contrary. I think we’re going to have to assume that Zac is out there, stuffing as many hamsters into his mouth as possible. I think this is particularly true as he transitions into more mature roles and slips out of his High School Musical comfort zone. The pressure will probably drive him to dark places, places where hamsters get eaten in the dark of night, leaving empty wheels and unoccupied piles of shredded paper.
I’ll tell you who DOESN’T eat hamsters, though . . . Rob Pattinson. Not many people know this, but Rob dedicates much of his spare time to saving wayward hamsters and rehabilitating them in a clinic HE FUNDS WITH HIS OWN MONEY. He wasn’t even going to take the Twilight job because he thought it would take too much time away from his hamsters (which he refers to as his “brothers and sisters of the tiny wheel”). It took a lot of convincing to get him to do the movie, and even then, it was only so he could open up more homes for wayward hamsters. I’m not saying Zac is bad and Rob is good—I just want to talk about this, because it bothers me that not enough people know this is going on.
You’re wondering where I heard this. Well, I can tell you that I have befriended the awesome Isabelle Adams, author of Eternally Yours: The Unauthorized Biography of Robert Pattinson. I’m not saying she TOLD me this. Maybe it’s just something I inferred from our conversation. You get what I’m saying?
Because Isabelle and I are good friends, she’s offered a signed copy or two of her book to be given out on this blog. And I’m going to give one out today (again, both on Blogspot and on the Ning) to a random commenter who leaves a question. I have never given out someone else’s book on my blog before, so you know this is special. I can tell you it is one exciting read, and offers MANY PAGES of color pictures of Rob’s hair! Quick! Get your questions in NOW!!!! Get your Rob Pattison fans over here because this is a ONE TIME OFFER!
* I used to be able to this entire rap in German along with the song, but have lost the ability. It seems like something I should work on.
Margaret asks: you said the other night that you would show us the Scarlett playlist. Can you please do that?
So I was on Twitter the other night, and I mentioned that I was listening to Grace Kelly by Mika, and that it was one of the big songs off my Suite Scarlett playlist. I wasn’t entirely sure if anyone CARED what I was listening to when I wrote the book, but the responses I got back indicated that people cared VERY MUCH. Which surprised me.
I’m actually pretty persnickety about my music-listening-while-writing habits. I put together playlists of songs, and I will only play those songs while I’m working. I pay a lot of attention to music when it’s playing. So I need to listen to something about 50 times in a row so that it’s just THERE. It just becomes the background.
And I don’t really know why I pick the songs I do. Only a few follow the themes of the book. They just ARE the right songs. It’s not that these are my favorite songs of all time—I like them. Some of them I love. They’re just the songs that were right. For me, anyway. I’m not suggesting you should listen to them or even pay the slightest bit of attention to this list. I answer only because I was asked.
There are actually three different Scarlett playlists alone—one for each major draft (probably about 60 songs in all). I’ve taken just a few of them, the ones I really remember and associate with writing the book.
Something 4 the Weekend by Super Furry Animals
This is the biggest and most important song, as far as Scarlett is concerned, though I have no idea WHY. I can only tell you that I was sitting at my desk on a cold winter’s morning, trying to figure out what I was going to write my next book about.
Anyway, this song came cycling through on my iTunes—and it just happened that at that moment, I thought of Suite Scarlett. Pretty much the whole thing. And for some reason, this song helped me think of it. I kept it on for hours and hours as I wrote the sketch of the story, and whenever I’m stuck and want to get back to the basics, I play it. It takes me right back to that initial moment. According to the play count, though, this is the #1 most played song on my computer.
Grace Kelly by Mika
I saw Mika on Late Night with Jules Holland, a few weeks or months before his album came out. He played this song, and I went insane for it and started pointing wildly at the television. I needed this song at once.
People I love or hate Mika, which is fair. I love him. And this song, for me, embodies the spirit of the book. If you hate Mika, IGNORE THIS.
I don’t understand this video, but I still want to BE IN IT.
April Fools by Rufus Wainwright
I worship at the altar of Rufus Wainwright, and this song is one of my favorites of his. This is the song I would play whenever I thought about how the Martins all got along (this one, and one called “Little Sister”). But this one was really the big one for me. I will never, ever get bored of the way Rufus and Martha (Rufus’s sister, also a musician) sing together on this song. It reminds me of Scarlett and Spencer.
This video is awesome. In case you don’t quite know what he’s talking about . . . Rufus is a big opera fan, and many of the leading ladies of opera meet terrible, terrible ends. This is Rufus spending a day with some of these characters and basically trying to keep them from biting it. (Martha is the one in the kimono.)
Nobody Cares by The 88
At some point while I was writing, I got a copy of Over and Over by The 88 and I remember playing it over and over for days on end while I was writing. It felt exactly right. The lyric is fairly relevant to Scarlett, I think. It’s basically about how no one actually cares what your problems are.
This video is okay. I think the lead singer should shave off his beard.
Only a Show and As Long As There is You and Me, by I Monster
These were very important songs, but I have little to say about them except that I like them a lot. iTunes has taken them off the U.S. store so booooo.
Pretty much the entire album of “Mobilize” by Grant Lee Philips
Okay, before you even say it . . . no. I didn’t know that Grant Lee Philips was “the troubadour” on the Gilmore Girls. I never watched the show. I was actually just a Grant Lee Philips fan. I was telling someone of my love for his album “Mobilize,” and she said, “Oh, the guy from the Gilmore Girls?” And I said, “No, the musician.” And she said, “Oh, the guy from the Gilmore Girls?” And I said, “No . . .”
And this went on for about six hours (five minutes) until we realized that this was ONE IN THE SAME PERSON. I felt mildly betrayed by this. I’m not 100% sure why. Maybe I just felt like a musician I love shouldn’t be SNEAKING AROUND the background of a television show, LURKING under streetlights, playing SMALL SNIPPETS of songs I adore. You have to admit that is a little coy and messed up.
Musicians should not be permitted to hide in plain sight in this fashion. This is not the witness protection program.* What’s next? Is David Bowie concealing himself on the set of Lost? Is Ben Folds cleverly camouflaging himself as a doorman on Gossip Girl?
Louis Quatorze by Bow Wow Wow
This song is hilariously filthy. It's about a 14 year old girl who is clearly "dating" a boy who is older. (How much older is unclear, but it seems like he is A LOT older, and he calls himself Louis Quatorze, which is also really weird and fabulous, because who sneaks around dating 14 year-olds while pretending to be a long dead French king? It is simply PERVERSE.) And believe it or not, between this and an exhibition of Velazquez paintings in London, I came up with the basics of Scarlett and Eric’s relationship.
Thanks to the movie Marie Antoinette, the awesomeness of Bow Wow Wow (and Annabella Lwin in particular) has been introduced to a new audience. The band was basically a big setup by Malcolm McLaren (who ran the Sex Pistols) to promote Vivienne Westwood’s fashions. Which is a weird way for a band to start, and by rights they shouldn’t be as good as they are, but Vivienne and Malcom had a way with these kinds of things.
And Velazquez? See, Velazquez was the painter of the Spanish court, and one of his jobs was to paint the princess Margaret Theresa, who was betrothed when she was very small to her uncle, Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor. He had to paint the princess every year or so to show her uncle/future husband how his wife was turning out.** The resulting series of paintings are remarkable both for their execution and their historical relevance. What’s truly amazing is that this incredibly creepy-sounding couple turned out to be very happy together—had a long and happy marriage.
So what do these two things have to do with the story? Well, I knew that Scarlett’s relationship with Eric was always going to be awkward, that people would have issues with it. And I wanted part of the difficultly to be related to an age difference, enough that Scarlett could always feel that Eric was able to do things that she couldn’t, that there was always a little tension because of it.
I didn’t want it to go from being awkward to being ILLEGAL, though, because that’s a different book. So when the book started, he was 20. Then I knocked him down to 19, then to 18. In the end, I figured that it was sort of enough that he was going off to acting school while Scarlett was still at home, still in high school. That is truly hard enough to deal with.
Nothing, Chorus Line, Original Broadway Cast Album
I reference A Chorus Line in the book. A Chorus Line is a musical written in 1975, though “written” in this case is a slightly loose term. The musical came out of a series of taped conversations with a group of dancers in 1974.*** Their stories were taken fairly directly and molded into the story, which revolves around an audition for a chorus line. So all the characters are based on real performers and the things they have gone through.
This song was always one of my favorites. Moralis tells the story of failing her acting class at the High School for Performing Arts (in the book, Spencer is a graduate of this school). She can’t embrace what she feels are “bullshit” exercises in which she has to feel like a table and an ice cream cone. The teacher allows her to be mocked and tells her that perhaps she isn’t fit to be an actress. I met only one or two teachers in theater school who were like this, but I remember that this song meant a lot to be during a particularly rough period.
Tiger and Dancing Queen by Abba
You knew Abba would be on there. You know you did.
And because I was also asked to publish them as an iMix, I will do so LATER THIS EVENING or EARLY TOMORROW. It will be LONGER than this list.
And, of course, I have two books to give out to RANDOM COMMENTERS! They are:
From Blogspot: Lindsay (aka Daisy Buzzblebee) From the Ning: Kendyl
E-mail me your addresses and SIGNED COPIES are on their way!
I’ll be giving out some more copies LATER IN THE WEEK! See you tomorrow with MANY MORE ANSWERS TO THINGS!
* Or, if it is, then the witness protection is not very good. ** Things were complicated before the internet was around. *** Mrs. Amberson claims to have been one of them, and that her contribution was cut out of the story in one of the last versions of the script.
Today, friends, I want to pause and reflect on something. This is the 24th day of Blog Every Day in April—an event that kicked off when I causally mentioned on Twitter that I thought it might be good to blog every day in April. I was just sort of talking . . . and by the end of that day, not only was I committed to blogging every day in April, but a few hundred OTHER people were committed to blogging every day in April.
It simply sprouted—this whole community. And now, three weeks in, I have gotten to know several of you. (I may be following you and YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW IT!) And hopefully, through BEDA buddies and other means, you have gotten to know each other.
Now, as we go into the LAST SEVEN DAYS of BEDA, I want to hit the reset button. You often have to do this in life—in projects long and short, and in relationships. You take a moment when you’re well into the madness to stop and say, “Let’s go back to the beginning and remember what this is all about.”
So during this last week . . . why not make renew your effort? I’m going to redouble my efforts to read as many blogs as I can. And if you have had trouble blogging every day for the month, why not blog every day for the last week? Why not read and comment on a few extra blogs? It’s only a week . . . and you never know what might come out of it. I didn’t know I would be making so many new friends, or that I would be taking a . . .
Well, let’s get to that, shall we?
THE DEATH
Maybe a week ago, I casually made the bet that if the Suite Scarlett paperback made the New York Times bestseller list, I would take a trapeze lesson at the New York Trapeze School. I said this TO ILLUSTRATE A POINT! That by building in a negative consequence to a positive thing, you feel great if it doesn’t happen! I was TRYING TO PERFORM A PUBLIC SERVICE.
Which was bad enough. And then I went to Las Vegas for the week to speak, and clearly the spirit of the place infected me. I don’t gamble on GAMES OF CHANCE, but I am never opposed to a SPORTING CHALLENGE. Which is why I put out my one day BONUS ROUND, in which I promised to go to trapeze school if you managed to get Scarlett into the top 1,000 on Amazon. Vegas makes you crazy. It makes you spontatnous. It makes you “use” “quotation” marks in “weird” ways.*
The concept of authors staring at the Amazon rank is one that has already been deftly examined by Scott Westerfeld in Extras.** I’ve even discussed it myself here and here.*** But again, I was under the sway of Vegas, the glittering lights and the shiny numbers and everything going BING BING BING all the time. I was also operating under the assumption that not many people knew the book had snuck out a week early, and that this was a fair and pretty safe thing to put out there.
“Oh, who will even notice!” I chuckled to myself. “The book is not supposed to be out until May 1st! It is a sporting lark!”
Honestly, WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?
Oh, sure, I was laughing when it was touching 1,400. “It will get close and back off,” I thought, as I rode home in the taxi from the airport. “Won’t that be funny!”
And then, it updated. And was #673. And then 500 something and 400 something and someone told me it was 300 something while I was sleeping. It hardly matters WHAT it got to, the point is it went under 1,000 which means I LOST.
I mean, certainly I won in the sense that many of you went out and bought Scarlett, and I do love her very much. But I lost in the sense that I CHALLENGED you and YOU WON and now I am going to have to go trapezeing, something I can honestly say was never in my Life Plan. I notice that one of the replies I got from my BEDA-friend Tobias was: “Now I understand why the Romans liked coliseums.” Yes, Tobias, CIRCUSES AND DEATH.
I know that the next big question is going to be: WHEN are you going to die/take this trapeze lesson? It’s important to schedule your own death correctly, so I’m looking over dates now. The most likely time at this second is late May . . . because my agent and several other people are coming to town and they all want to BE THERE to watch me DIE. Even my EDITOR wants to go. So I have to make sure I get the right moment so that everyone can watch the END OF ME.
I also know that people want to see proof. Naturally, this will be provided via video. Possibly several videos. And we’ll have plenty of time for me to build up and have a PROPER nervous breakdown, because it’s no good doing something like this without adequate time to think about your own stupidity, now IS THERE?
God only knows what I’ll do to myself next on Twitter.
But . . . let us go back to the LIFE point. We have a week left to blog every day. And I have just received the first box of Suite Scarlett paperbacks.**** So I am going to give one out to a RANDOM COMMENTER (one on blogger, and one on the Ning). Enter to win by leaving a comment, preferably with an ASK MJ question. Winners announced tomorrow!
** Many things are examined in Extras, but Scott told me himself that one of the ideas he was riffing off of was a behavior he knew well—authors obsessively checking the Amazon rank. The point is, you should always listen when Scott Westerfeld is talking, because you just might learn something. He should have his own theme music. Like this, but with more hoverboards.
*** It must seem obnoxious to REFERENCE MYSELF. That’s not what I am attempting to do—it’s more that I am trying to avoid repeating myself. With all the blogging this month, I try to keep track of things I have already communicated to you. I want to make sure that I bring you only the FRESHEST information. Also, I am lazy, and linking to myself is easy.
**** At least, I think that’s what’s in the box. I haven’t opened it. Well, whatever it is, two people will win some of its contents.
Today, the final installment of the insane, unpublished, unrevised notes of grad school me working in Las Vegas. Tomorrow, I will be back answering YOUR QUESTIONS.
THE TIGER DIARIES, THE FINAL CHAPTER
This part of the story is really the most embarrassing, where I became someone I did not know. I don’t know what did it. The exhaustion. Low blood sugar. Just being around someone with his own television show . . .
I returned to my table. The pyrotechnics guy had tried to claim my seat in my absence, and to add insult to injury—he was eating a sandwich.
“Out,” I said, pointing at the chair and the little red light that I took my orders from. “I push button. I get pellet.”
“What?”
“MY CHAIR!”
He got up, and the aroma of sandwich lingered in his wake. Some crazy music was playing. I looked at the monitor and watched the dancers in the tubey things doing some kind of impossible snake dance. I put on my headset and listened to my boss deliver a steady string of explicatives as he tried to light it without having the slightest clue what they were doing or when it would end.
I was disgusted with myself, posing for that stupid picture. There was nothing THAT wrong with it, but just being around all those people who were selling these medications for so much money, congratulating themselves. And I was so ABOVE getting all crazy about [the famous comedian]. I resolved to be as aloof as possible when his keeper finally let him come backstage.
He did come, just a few minutes later. I could just make out his figure standing across the way, politely talking to some guy who probably worked for us now. A woman had joined us—a nasty, icy piece of work who managed the dancers. She’d been sniping at people since she arrived and lurked over our shoulders. I gave her a “bug off” look and she gave me a “I haven’t eaten a full meal in 15 years and I pull hair” look back.
“Maureen!”
I whacked the com button on my headset.
“Yeah?”
“Is [the famous comedian] back there?”
“Yeah, he’s there.”
“Go tell him he has five minutes.”
Oh GREAT. GREAT. Now I had to go talk to the man again. His keeper would try to shove me aside and he and I would have another awkward moment together.
Aloof, I told myself. Go tell the man five minutes.
So I went up to him, and his keeper tried to block me. I stepped around her and told him he had five minutes, and he very politely said thank you. He talked to me a little bit, even though I could see this annoyed his little minion. I liked that.
I went back to my seat to get my headset to listen for further instructions. Some nervous looking guy in a suit that I had just seen in the back room was floating around, wringing his hands nervously. Obviously, he had to make sure things Went Right, considering he’d just hired [the famous comedian]. I nodded, indicating that we were professionals and On Top Of It. He nodded back his thanks.
Finally, the dancers finished whatever it was they were doing and slithered offstage, one by one.
“Would you just go!” my boss was screaming, largely to himself. “GET OFF THE STAGE. Maureen! They left some kind of crap all over the stage! GET IT OFF!”
I took off the headset and went on to the stage, while my boss made some swirly transitional light effects and the idiot announcer with the book he didn’t write said some announcer things. The dancers had shed some little bits of tubing, and I gathered them up, along with the guy in the suit. (Who was probably a VP of sales or something.) He took his off, and I was just finishing up, when suit guy ran back to me with a pint of bottled water in each hand.
“These are warm!” he screeched, shoving them into my hands. I stood there for a moment, unable to respond.
“They’re warm!” he repeated. “WARM!”
Frenzy is a catchy thing. One moment, I was just a person who didn’t really like [the famous person] very much, standing backstage at a sales conference in Vegas. In the next, I was a person on a stage in front of hundreds of people, devastated by the thought that I was somehow party to the fact that [the famous person] was about to be given warm water. This fact tore this man and I to pieces. We obviously had to do something. I took the bottles from him and pushed my way through the glut of people waiting around the stairs to get on stage, including the dancers covered in the copper tubing and the president of the pharmaceutical company.
(“They’re warm,” I said to the latter, holding up the bottles. He nodded nervously, as if he knew that I had done the right thing by pushing him aside. We all seemed to understand the nature of this emergency at once.)
I dove for the vat of ice on the refreshment table and plucked out two cold waters and ran back up the stairs. As I tried to get on stage, however, the nasty dance lady grabbed me by the arm.
“Where do you think you are going with those?”
“Get your hand off of me,” I snapped.
“Those waters are for my dancers.”
“Your dancers are finished,” I said, “and that water is for all the speakers and performers. Now get your hand off of me.”
She didn’t, so I pulled my arm from her grasp. Another backstage staff member shoved her from behind. I gave him the thumbs-up and made for the stage.
“It’s okay, really,” [the famous person] was saying.
Obviously, the man had also run up to the PA and given her the same message of warning, for she too was running for the stage, having obtained two bottles of water from somewhere out in the dining area. Meanwhile, the man himself had gotten some water. Observers were treated to the sight of three of us all running from different corners, all carrying two small bottles of water, all heading towards one small, rounded stool sitting center stage. The PA got there first and left her two bottles. The man and I reached the stool at the same time and considered the situation quickly. There was almost no room left on the slopped, padded surface, but we had run like hell with our two bottles each and we were going to look pretty stupid if we didn’t do something with them. We looked at each other. We each left one bottle, which overcrowded the stool, causing the four bottles to slide. We ran before they all fell.
I was finished by this point. I could have sat back and watched the show. But I missed [the famous person’s] entire act because I was stalking the back halls looking for the dance lady. I had no plan. I just wanted to run into her and DO SOMETHING. The days of no sleep, the constantly jangled nerves, the fact that you could pick up the phone and get tigers, or explosives, or fog, or fifty cars . . . it had CHANGED me. Now I was the kind of person who stalked back hallways with a headset on, trying to start physical fights with circus folk . . .
The account trails off at this point. The only thing I really remember is that I went outside for the first time the whole week . . . walked out to the crazy, pumping strip in the middle of the desert . . . and it rained. It NEVER rains in Vegas. But it rained that night. The streets flooded and people ran for cover and lightening cracked. I finally had some food, but I was so hungry, I didn’t want it anymore.
My boss came and sat next to me, smoking nervously. I’d had little sleep. He’d had none.
“Hey,” he said, twitching like a bug, “you did okay. We have a gig in L.A. in a few weeks. Wanna come? It’ll be easy. Easy. I promise.”
This is not today's REAL BEDA post. This is a BONUS post.
I'm about to board a plane to leave Las Vegas, but before I leave the city of sin, I make a bet with YOU, dear readers.
A few days ago, I made a stupid pledge to go to the New York Trapeze School if the Suite Scarlett paperback made the New York Times Bestseller list.
Well! The book is now OUT. It arrived a few days early. And since I am in a SPORTING MOOD, I issue a challenge. (Borrowed from my friend Kaleb Nation.) If Suite Scarlett breaks the top 1000 on Amazon today, I accept the trapeze penalty.
This is a ONE DAY BONUS ROUND, purely in honor of the early release and my new VEGAS ways!
What makes it even MORE sporting is that I will be on an airplane for the rest of the day and WON'T KNOW what the outcome is until I land, but I am COUNTING ON YOU not to let me down. I am BANKING on the fact that I am not going to trapeze school.
So, please, whatever you do . . . buy something else. Surely you need another Paper Towns, or Kaleb's book, or Robin Wasserman's Skinned, or How to Be Bad, or How to Ditch Your Fairy, or one of Cassie Clare's books . . . or one of MANY OTHER FINE BOOKS.
Come on, people! SHOW ME YOUR SLACK! Don't spend any money!
It's a bet.
Ill be back later with the final chapter of THE TIGER DIARIES, and the OUTCOME of this challenge!
I’m still here in Vegas, watching pirate ships explode outside my window and looking at the red rocks in the distance. (Perhaps you’ve been following my reports on Twitter? What did I do before Twitter?)
Without further ado, part four of The Tiger Diaries—my never-before-seen report from a week I spent working in Las Vegas as a graduate student. (Heavily edited for clarity and brevity.) The final installment comes tomorrow, and after that, I have MANY OTHER THINGS to talk to you about. Let us waste NO MORE TIME.
THE TIGER DIARY, PART FOUR
When my alarm clock rang on the last morning, I actually woke up with a scream. Four thirty AM. Two hours sleep. Much to do. I had at least five presentations left to finish before manning the monitor at nine for the first presentations.
No one wanted to look at our slides. All the reps either had their noses in their Jaguar manuals, mentally combining exterior and interior colors, or they were so hung over that they slumped in their chairs and slept. Our announcer was bored that afternoon. He sat next to me for a while as I was working, asking me about myself. I told him that I was a grad student and that I was studying writing.
“I’m a writer too,” he nodded. “My book just came out.”
I congratulated him.
“I spend a lot of time working with children,” he said. “I work with children who can see auras. I wrote a book on their visions of God. Would you like to see it?”
He was already fishing it out of his bag. I don’t remember what it was called. Something like God Through the Eyes of a Child. It was a book of pictures that children had drawn. The children had written captions for the pictures. There was no other writing in the book.
“Good job,” I said. “Do you have any food?”
He didn’t.
Around three in the afternoon, I had a ten minute break. I ran to a small conference room that someone told me had been abadonded. There were sandwiches there, I heard. Just a few hours old, in excellent condition. I ran there as fast I as could. What I found instead were ten members of Cirque du Soliel assembling a harness and a set of green silk wings that spanned the width of the room.
I apologized. They nodded, not really caring that I had intruded. They were intent on the wings.
“Have you seen any sandwiches?” I asked. “I was told there were sandwiches in here.”
They shook their heads.
“Can I ask what you’re doing?” I said.
“I leeeeeeve to fly,” the man in the bird outfit said to me.
I shut the door and went across the hall to our main stage room, only to find that a wall of massive balloons—each about three feet high and wide—had been put up on our stage. The wall extended the full length of the stage and went all the way to the ceiling. A crew was examining it minutely. My boss was mutely watching this procedure.
“They’re wiring the balloons with explosives,” he said, before I could even ask anything.
“Explosives? What for?”
“I have no idea,” he said.
“I just saw them putting together a bird costume in the other room,” I said. “It must have had a wingspan of twenty-five feet.”
“Oh,” he nodded, looking up. “That must be what that’s for.”
There was a cable strung across the ceiling, which led right up to the balloon wall.
“Do you have any idea what they’re doing?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then how are you going to call the show? How are you going to call all of the light and sound cues?”
He shrugged.
I went on to the next room. It was filled with large, round dinner tables, draped in purple, blue, green, black, and gold. Each one had a unique, twisting, towering centerpiece made of fabric, wire, and flowers, maybe three or four feet high. Each place was set with multicolored checkered plates. In the back, someone was test-lighting a centerpiece. Flames shot up.
“What’s this?” I said to the people there.
“Dinner,” one of them replied.
“Do you have any food?”
“No.”
“I’m just to leave and pretend I never saw any of this.”
He nodded. I gave up and went back to my station. My break was over.
Around five, still hungry and so tired I was shaking, I pounded out the last presentations on a laptop and the crew made the last minute preparations for the evening. I pulled on my headphones and got ready for the start of the show. Crew filled the room now, and many of us had never met one another—we were all employed by different groups. There were probably fifteen of us, maybe more.
“All right,” my boss said. “Who are all of you? Everybody identify yourselves.”
Voices from every part of the room. People in headsets, somewhere out there.
“Teleprompter op.”
“Pyrotechnics.”
“Cameraman.”
“Stagehand.”
“PA.”
“Spotlight.”
“Presentation op,” I chimed in.
“All right,” my boss said slowly, “aside from the first fifteen minutes and the end of the show, I have no idea what’s supposed to be happening tonight. If any of you see anything that’s part of the show, let me know, and . . . %^@#%! Will someone move that @#$&#? The guy with the wine. He’s sitting on the spinning wheel. That’s pyrotechnics. That thing’s going to go off in a minute!”
I heard an affirmative sound and heard a muffled conversation as the aforementioned @#$&# was removed from the exploding wheel. A minute later the crackling sparks were heard coming from a spot just in front of the screens and gold and silver.
“Birdman is rising,” my boss yelled. “We have liftoff.”
We watched through the monitor as the 25 feet of silk wingspan slowly rose to the ceiling—slowly, slowly, so slowly, like a piano being hoisted up into a apartment building. He crept across the ceiling and flew into the wall of balloons.
“Balloons, go,” someone said over the headset.
All of the balloons exploded, basically in Birdman’s face. This didn’t seem to phase him. He drifted contentedly to the stage on his wire, took his bow, and left.
“Maureen!” my boss screamed. “You’re next! Someone . . . one of your people . . .”
I scrambled and outright guessed what I was supposed to put up the screen. While I did this, a lithe young man, naked except for a small pair of briefs, and painted head to toe in gold, came and stood behind me. He had a hula-hoop. I glanced at him nervously, but he did not speak. He was intent on the monitor that showed what was going on on stage. A random guy came and sat next to me and started noodling away on a computer. I decided it was best to assume he worked for us.
“Did you hear who we got for the main act tonight?” he asked.
“No,” I answered, looking over at the golden boy again. “Who?”
“[An extremely famous person]*,” he answered.
“[An extremely famous person]? How the hell did they do that?”
“They wired [a very large sum of money] into his bank account this afternoon.”
“Oh.” I said.
“We should tell your boss about . . .” He indicated the golden boy, who was now leaping in place to warm himself up.
“Right. We probably should.”
I switched on my headset and explained that someone had arrived backstage, probably to do something in the show.
“What’s he do?” my boss asked.
I looked over my shoulder and saw the golden naked boy leaping around for no apparent reason.
“I couldn’t tell you,” I answered honestly.
“How long is his act? Nevermind. Nevermind. When he walks on, I guess I’ll try to figure out what lights or audio he needs. Whatever. This is #$^&ing insane. Has anyone seen [the famous person]?”
Replies to the negative.
“All right,” my boss said, “tell whoever you’ve got back there to go.”
I told the golden boy that he was on, and he silently leapt up the stairs to the stage. My random friend and I watched him on the monitor as he began an astonishing series of balancing acts, all the while undulating and keeping the hula-hoop spinning. He jumped and dashed around the stage, completely absorbed in his act, not caring that the room had gone deadly quiet, or that he had just followed a sales manager’s speech.
“What the #$@ am I looking at?” my boss groaned after a moment or two of trying to suss out some impromptu lighting cues. “Oh my God. Has anyone seen [the famous person] yet?”
A chorus of no’s.
When I turned again, ten dancers, their bodies painted black and silver and wound all over with copper tubing were coming in through the kitchen entrance to stand behind us.
“Maureen!” my boss snapped. “What’s going on? What do you see?”
I looked at the dancers for a moment.
“Um . . .”
“Go find [the famous person]!” he said, probably deciding he didn’t want the answer to his last question. “Now!”
An order is an order. I pulled off my headset and went to look for [the famous person]. I checked around the corridors, looked into the kitchen, scanned the loading dock. Nothing. I started trying random doors. After looking into a few empty board rooms, I opened the door on a gathering of the company bigwigs. They looked startled for a moment, then one of them pulled me inside.
“Come on, Maureen,” he said. “Have your picture taken.”
I walked up to [the famous person]. He was [a description was here that would make the famous person very easy to identify, so I had to leave it out]. He held out his arm in a friendly fashion, although he never shifted his gaze from the carpet.
“Yeah—come here Maureen,” said [the famous person]. “Nice to meet you.”
It wasn’t nice to meet me; it was tedious, obviously. But it was all a part of the large sum that had rippled down the wire the day before and was now happily nesting in his bank account. I was embraced by an arm draped in a very expensive sleeve of a very expensive suit. There we were, with nothing in common except that we were both being paid by these people, and if they wanted to take our picture, then they could take it. When that was done, [the famous person] went back to talking, and his assistant—a supremely hassled-looking woman with a clipboard and a stack of paper—ejected me from the room.
“He’s supposed to be on in a minute or so,” I told her.
“I’ll tell him,” she said, making it clear to me that she was the only one here who was to speak to [the famous person].
I returned to my seat to find that people were screaming my name frantically over the headset. In the three minutes that I was away, three minutes out of twenty hours in that chair, something had finally gone radically wrong and I was needed. My new friend was on his belly, crawling along the back of the stage, trying to repair one of the projector cables.
“We’ve got nothing! Give us a graphic! Something!”
I clicked on a likely-looking file and threw a pretty picture up on the screen.
“Never leave your post,” my boss shouted. “Never!”
“But you said . . .”
“Forget what I said! Is [the famous person] back there?”
“He’s in the hall.”
“He’d better get his ass on stage! Go get him!”
“But you just said . . .”
“Do it!”
*********
Tune in tomorrow for THE CONCLUSION! And SOME OTHER STUFF!
* It’s fair to call him a major celebrity and television personality. I saw a massive billboard for him just today, here, on the Vegas strip.
Today’s blog comes to you FROM VEGAS, as promised. I Twittered this picture on my arrival, but Twitter ATE IT. So I want to put it here so you can see just how awesome it is:
Aw HELL yeah!
From my window, I can see a fake Manhattan skyline, real desert mountains, the Eiffel Tower, and a pirate ship that periodically explodes. I think I’ve misjudged Vegas . . . this is MY KIND OF A PLACE.
And now, part three of the hastily written TIGER DIARIES . . .
DAY THREE
The morning of day three began with the Secret Service locking us in rooms and generally hassling us left and right while we tried to work. [The former President] was speaking to a group of the executives and signing autographs and rubbing their shiny bald heads or something. This is when I heard the exchange about the tigers over my walkie talkie.
I was tired and hungry. I’d just had the cold coffee with the curdled milk. I was working on three hours of sleep. I noticed that my personality had deteriorated sharply.
The conference itself was starting that day, which meant that long with my hours of prepping the presentations, I had backstage work to do, starting at 10 AM. Which is why I needed to DUDES with the GUNS to let me out of the CLOSET.
The biggest conference room had been transformed overnight. An eight-hundred square foot stage had been assembled there, with an twenty-foot proscenium, three rear-projection screens . . . Once the tech platform with its tables of light and sound control panels and its monitors is up . . . once the room is rigged floor to ceiling with cable, the microphones and amplifiers are in, the lights are hung, the spotlight has been wheeled in . . . once two banquet tables filled with computer equipment are set up behind the stage, and the screens are flashing with test patterns and music is pumping to test the speakers . . . then, it’s not just a conference room. It’s a theater.
Behind the screen, in a pitch-black tangle of wires, platforms, and computer equiptment, there was a table. MY table. On the table was a small red light. I soon got to know the red light intimately, as from that afternoon onward I spent most of my time looking at it. Whenever there was a presentation going on (which was about ten hours each day), I was there. When they needed to change a slide, they were to click their clicker. The clicker was connected to the small box that sat in front of me. When they clicked, a little light on my box turned red. When the light turned red, I clicked the mouse and the slide advanced.
Red light. Push button. Red light. Push button. Red light. Push button.
That was my job.
My table looked very fancy. It was heaped with computer equipment, most of which I neither touched nor knew what it was. I worked on two laptops simultaneously, running the presentation on one, and looking at it in outline form on another. On one, I managed the feed to the screen with the red light/push button method. Should that computer have gone down, I was to ask for a screen freeze, which would hold the last image. Then we would disconnect my computer from the feed line, reconnect my second computer to the live line, switch it to presentation mode, and resume the show with no one in the audience any the wiser. (This is pretty much the same technique used in suspense movies, when a photo is taped to the videocamera, or some videotaped footage of the vault is fed in, and the person watching the monitor has no idea the robbery is actually going on.)
So, on day three, I did that for about eight hours, on top of the five I’d put in that morning. The open secret of the evening’s proceedings was that the sales awards would be reveled. Not the recipients—that was coming the next night. Just the awards would be seen. The reps were buzzing with anticipation over this. Every salesperson in the winning region, along with top salespeople from every region would get one of these mysterious prizes. Attendance was going to be good at this evening’s presentation.
I knew what the awards were because I’d seen them coming in through the loading dock. They were arranged neatly in the room next to ours, which had been rented just for this purpose. The party planner, [name redacted], was responsible for arranging the presentation—my boss had only to give the cue to pull back the accordion divider that separated the two rooms, and all would be revealed. We’d heard that the party planner wanted to add to the mystery of the presentation by veiling the prize room with smoke. This meant that the smoke machine had to pump for an hour or more before the reveal. We were getting strong wafts of it backstage, and we were starting to sneeze and cough.
After making the reps sit through the boring technical presentations, the signal was given to reveal the surprise. The wall was opened. Set free, the pent-up smoke overtook the room. If you could see through it, you would have noticed the entire room of new Jaguars. Not live Jaguars, like the live tigers, but cars. About fifty of them.
The smoke kept coming in heavy waves. It filled the room, so the crew opened the doors. Then it snaked along the halls, and began to creep upstairs to the casino. It entered the room where the tigers were still resting and caused a panic. It set off the smoke detectors.
Over the headset I heard my boss say to the party planner, “You told the fire department about this, right? You know you have to clear smoke machines with the fire department, right? So that they know the building’s not on fire, right?”
The answer to all of those questions was no.
So we sat and watched the firemen come and everyone being evacuated. We stayed behind, hidden in the smoke and the wires. We heard the coughing and the mayhem and people yelling things about tigers. Then we watched the party planner get fired. And then we saw ourselves being hired to take over all the entertainment . . .
. . . which may not SOUND like a big deal, but realize that something like a million bucks had been budgeted, and everything was already booked, and we had no real idea WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN at the big show on the next night because the party planner stormed out of the building and refused to tell anyone what he had set up. We only knew we were running it, whatever it was.
Two other facts were soon brought to our attention.
Originally, [a famous comedian] had been hired to perform at the close of the conference the next night. But when [the famous comedian] sat down with the president of the pharmaceutical company that afternoon, his material had been found objectionable. He refused to change a word. By the terms of his contract, he was to be paid no matter what. So his services was deemed unnecessary, and he received his [extremely large sum of money, in the six digits]. This left a huge hole in the schedule. The final act was missing. We had to find a new famous person, probably someone in Los Angeles, to come to Las Vegas THE NEXT NIGHT. This on top of everything else we had to do.
We also learned that the theme of the closing night was circus. A team of chefs and designers were had long been at work. Cirque du Soliel had already been booked, and they would be performing throughout the evening. We had absolutely no idea when they were coming, what acts they were doing, how long they were staying, or what we needed to secure. We got a hint of something about “many explosions,” and then we were left to figure it all out.
Around one in the morning, as I sat working in the now-empty room, I watched a team of handlers pushing the tigers back down the halls. They were followed by another team driving a steady stream of Jaguars down the hallway, out through the service doors, taking the last of the smoke with them. My boss was on the phone to someone in LA and was more or less have a nervous collapse in front of me. I was already feeling the effects of no sleep, but I knew that tonight, there would be none at all. I would be doing the 48 hours straight, and they were probably going to be the most unlikely of my life.
