Remember when you told all those lies about me on Twitter? Well, THIS is like THAT, but with John Green. You have TWO HOURS to vote! That’s until 4pm NYC time! To the winner, a SCARLETT FEVER!
1. mighty_mouse720 @realjohngreen believes it's not butter.
2. erinv@realjohngreen will knock three times on the ceiling if he wants you, twice on the pipes if the answer is no.
3. Loisunpublished @realjohngreen has never really looked for Alaska
4. mighty_mouse720 @realjohngreen dropped an infant into a well, trying to teach it how to swim.
5. Helena2011 @realjohngreen gets a pedicure every tuesday. His toenails say 'i <3 Maureen!'
6. Loisunpublished @realjohngreen invented the Slap-Chop.
7. erinv @realjohngreen is currently writing a book on the fine art of 'manscaping'"
8. K_elli @realjohngreen's main form of transportation is a bike with a flowered banana seat and sparkly pink tassels
9. mighty_mouse720 By day John Green is an author/vlogger, but by night he is the Emerald Arachnid, saving populations in a giant spider suit.
10. lonesome_pine There is no @realjohngreen. Only Zuul.
11. chipmunk2011 @realjohngreen is selling maureen johnson collectibles on ebay. they have her real hair
12. Sergium @realjohngreen is actually just Maureen Johnson before she puts her makeup on.
13. lcrosbie @realjohngreen once tested new medical product called Viagrogaine...now puff levels can never go down.
14. ImaginaryGel http://twitpic.com/eddxy - @maureenjohnson John Green and @coollike got into a fight over who would play Keith. John lost.
15. deanocarroll John Green installed Death Panels on his roof and now all his electricity comes from old people and puppies dying
16. nickmcrae @realjohngreen John Green wears Drakkar Noir.
UPDATE: It was quite a battle, but the winner was NUMBER 15.
I am incapable of lying, but I admire the ability in others.
Yesterday, on Twitter, I challenged people to tell some lies about me. I’m not sure what made me do this. Perhaps I was thinking of my friend Justine Larbalestier’s new book, Liar.* Perhaps I was just thinking about how ACCURATE everything is on the internet. In any case, I threw down the challenge. To the winner, I promised a shiny new ARC of SCARLETT FEVER, months before the release of the book.
I have always known that you are exceptionally clever, but I got a powerful reminder of that when I read the entries. It took me quite a while to read them all and to select just 25 of them. In fact, I BROKE MY TWITTER trying to access replies, there were so many of them.
Now, for your consideration are 25 LIES ABOUT ME. Like its predecessor, Zombie Idol, LIAR IDOL will be judged by YOU.
Here are the rules:
Vote in the comments. You may only vote once. This is an honor system. (And if you sign in anonymously, please put your name on your comment.)
Throughout the day, I will count the votes. The winner will be called at 5 PM, New York time.
GOOD LUCK, Liars.
THE LIES
1. @NinjaFanpire If @maureenjohnson says your going to die at a certain time and place, you'd better get there and you'd better already be dead.
3. @JayOrDan23In the event of a water landing, @maureenjohnson can also be used a flotation device.
4. @itokro The Pope reads @maureenjohnson, and broke his wrist trying to re-create a Spencer stunt.
5. @livin4hymn Amy Winehouse isn't addicted to drugs, she just experienced too much of @maureenjohnson at once and hasn't been the same since
6. OSUBrit They say @maureenjohnson never blinks, and that she roams around the woods at night foraging for wolves...
7. @creativemachine Kids check under their beds for the boogieman. The boogieman checks under his bed for Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris checks for @maureenjohnson
8. @sophienotemily If you need to find the nearest @maureenjohnson... there's an app for that.
9. @lalibrarylady86Top Editor at Us Weekly Departing http://bit.ly/vvgdH because of @maureenjohnson Editor's final quote: "That woman will put me in my grave"
10. @granbookpub @maureenjohnson shocked to find the opening sentence of SCARLETT FEVER won the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest. @realjohngreen submitted it.
11. @pumpkin0core@maureenjohnson walks into a bar. Now laugh.
12. @omgitsoml14 Always be sure to use protection when having @maureenjohnson
13. @pumpkin0core In the latest Mortal Kombat, @maureenjohnson is an unlockable character. Not even the programmers know how to unlock her.
14. @lunar321 @maureenjohnson has a whole poe statue, @realjohngreen only has a bust. and since poe was a guy, his bust is miniscule.
15. @calliebeth The Bible as a collection of written works was entirely authored by @maureenjohnson. This explains the immense popularity
16. @granbookpub Every fall @maureenjohnson stops writing & tweeting for 2 days straight to try for tickets to Oprah's Favorite Things! She's not giving up!
17. @digitalcable @maureenjohnson was once on "Cops" 3 times in the same episode; cocaine is a hell of a drug.
18. @firecracker704 @maureenjohnson is the hooker that beat up Vince.
19. @MasonWinsauer @maureenjohnson has been determined to be the cure of 99.6% of the worlds ailments. However, she is too highly volatile to mine safely.
20. @NinjaFanpire On her birthday, @maureenjohnson randomly selects one lucky child to be thrown into the sun.
21. @SpinachPuffs Prior to becoming an author, @maureenjohnson auditioned for a part in the Lord of the Rings movies. She was in the top 3 choices for Gimli!
22. @WordsLikeRoses @maureenjohnson has taken all her followers souls and sewed them into curtains. Tough luck for us.
23. @worldgirl84 In the original line-up of the Spice Girls @maureenjohnson was going to be Creepy Spice
24. @rhondastapleton @maureenjohnson invented the Internet, tight-fitting chinos, the color yellow, and the concept of leap year.
25. @jrg1990: @maureenjohnson steals plot from @realjohngreen! Read all about it!
THE WINNER . . .
YOU have spoken, and while the competition was FIERCE, #25 emerges as THE LIAR IDOL. All hail!
* I am interested in lies out of artistic curiosity. Justine is interested in lies because she has no morals.
MOTIVATIONAL SPEECH ABOUT LYING, OWLS, AND OVERALLS
In reading many of your blogs, I notice that some of you are concerned about whether or not you will be able to make it through an entire month of blogging every day. I want to provide you some encouragement, give you a rousing speech. This is why I am thought of as “the Churchill of blogging.”*
Today, Google offered me a link to an owl pellet store. I really don't know why. Google often gets things wrong when it comes to the links it offers me,** but sometimes, it gets things so wrong it gets them right. Like the time it gave me those links to Rat Mart. That turned out TOTALLY AWESOME. So I decided to have a look at this new owl pellet link. My curiosity was rewarded! This was the entire description of the very first product: “Most contain at least a skull and sometimes more. Great for younger students and tight budgets.”
And I can have up to FIFTY of them for 99 cents! Plus, this site has a 24/7 HOOTLINE, which makes me think there is a stiff business in owl pelletry!
Now, I have no idea what owl pellets are. Someone out there will want to tell me—the site itself offers a link of explanation. But will I click it? No. I will not. I want to savor this description with no idea what it all really means. A skull . . . and sometimes more? For a dollar? My mind is filled with joyful images just because I am willfully keeping myself ignorant on the subject of owl pelletry.
Lots of times, I like to be kept in the dark a little bit. I will go out of my way to make sure I don’t find out certain things, even if that means lying to myself. I try to be very honest with other people—especially you, readers—but lying to myself is totally acceptable, and I do it well. I tell myself some whoppers, and I believe them, because I am just that skilled. Or stupid. Whichever.
Sometimes, you have to lie to yourself a little to get to the ULTIMATE TRUTH.
Like in this case of blogging every day. Now, I have seen a few comments where people have said that it is probably easier for me to blog every day than someone not used to writing every day . . . and while there is some truth in that, it doesn’t entirely hold. I am used to writing every day, that’s true. But I was only managing maybe one blog a week (and sometimes one blog every two weeks, and on occasion, one blog a month). That was about the rate I could handle when I was doing other things.
So I was really not ready for this at all. I didn’t TRAIN for it or anything. The blog I am doing every day for this entire month is really a few more miles I didn’t plan on going—a pint of blood I wasn’t sure I had to give. But I LIED to myself and said I could do it, and here I am doing it!
In the past, people did not have blogs as a way of expressing themselves. For example, in England in the early 1980s, you were required by law to wear overalls all the time—and if you had anything you wanted to express, you had to do it out on the street corner, with banjos.*** Instead of writing a blog, you would have had to do something like this:
Also, great cultural discoveries took years to transmit in the days before blogs! For example . . . I have been obsessively watching Flash Gordon for years and years, but if I hadn’t read the Youtube comments on this, I probably never would have noticed that Ming, who has JUST been told the name of the planet Earth****, conveniently has an “EARTHQUAKE” button on his keyboard of doom! And now I can tell you! Because I have to blog EVERY DAY!
“But mj,” you say, because we are friends, “aren’t you just randomly sticking up videos you like to fill up space because you are writing this blog in the middle of the night? Doesn’t that indicate that you are perhaps worried that your blog brain is going to shrivel up and die? I mean, Flash Gordon and Dexy’s Midnight Runners are both totally awesome, but isn’t this just a ploy to buy yourself some time until Monday? Not that you have any plan for what happens on Monday.”
Of COURSE not! Don’t be INSANE! If I was just RANDOMLY sticking up videos, I would put up this one:
I am trying to tell you that you are at a UNIQUE MOMENT IN HISTORY—the dawning days of the internet—where you can record your stories and break through your personal barriers, and in the process, you can make friends and gather readers. Because BEDA simply grew one day—a beautiful flower of about 400 participants out of one little Twitter seed. And only four days in, some of you have already forged new relationships. Some of you have blogged for the first time. Some of you have renewed your commitment to write more, to record more. Some of you are reading the blogs of complete strangers and finding out things you could know in NO OTHER WAY!
My consultant, Free Monkey*****, is now translating all of my books into Middle English. I asked him why he was doing this, and he said, “For the Future.” Which is an enigmatic answer, especially considering that Middle English is pretty much as in the past as you can get. But I have learned not to say these things, as he has more than once accused me of linear thinking, or at worst, chrono-fascism. I now see what he means.
In the FUTURE, there may be rules about such things. Maybe blogging will be controlled by our robot overlords and have strict rules and cost lots of money. But today, we are free! Free to blog away, and no one can stop us, my friends!
And sure, some days will be hard. Like today, for instance! Maybe TODAY, some of you just DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT . . . but you sat down at two in the morning and you just FORGED BRAVELY ON, knowing that if you just pushed it a little further, another idea would come. Or you could just put up another video.
Look, just DO IT! We are all with you! Do not fear the blank screen or the blank page. Do not fear the 25 days ahead. Christmas has 25 days****** and that’s not scary, is it? Think of it that way! And think how you will feel when you complete the task—how people will praise you! It may be like this, which encompasses Christmas, praise, and meeting new people!
There is NOTHING random about that!
* I’m not, actually, but I’m totally okay with it if you started going around calling me “the Churchill of blogging.”
** Like dateacougar.com.
*** This is still the law in some towns in the UK, as I understand it.
The first draft of my new book is due on Friday, which also happens to be my birthday. Just so you know, I am taking stun gun off the list of things I want. This is because I had to reach behind my tv the other day to unplug something, and I got a huge shock from the power strip. It zapped my whole arm. So for now, I do not want a stun gun.
But to all of you out there with spare Vespas and miniature ponies . . . they are still very much on the list.
The new book is going very well—at least in the sense that the first draft is going very well. There is much left to be done and it will be written several more times before it is done. I will tell you this much about the story . . . it takes place in New York, and it’s about a family that lives in a hotel. In making this hotel, I had to think about the rules that might govern life there, the things you might take for granted.
It made me think of the rules, and the lies, my parents imposed on me when I was just a tiny mj.
When I was growing up, if my parents suspected me of telling a lie, they would say to me, “Maureen, stick out your tongue.” I would do it. My mom or dad, whoever was doing the questioning, would lean down and examine it. If they doubted me, they’d say, “I see a black spot!” I would run to the mirror and look for the black spots. Sometimes I even thought I saw them.
I was a pretty truthful child, so if I thought I saw one of these spots on my tongue, I would sit and really question what I had said. Was I really telling the truth? Had I done something I was unaware of? This would send me into metaphysical spins for whole minutes at a time.
Eventually, I figured out that this was a trick. It took a while, but I got there.
What I didn’t figure out for a long time was that this is not a universal trick. I sort of assumed that everyone’s parents did this—that it was some kind of wacky old tradition that they’d picked up on.
Recently, someone told me something that sounded like a lie, and I said, “Liar. Stick out your tongue!” It was a bit of a throwback, I realized, like making reference to a really old commercial by accident. It just came out.
The person who I said this to just stared at me. I explained . . . lies, black spots, tongue. I did not see the shock of recognition. There was no, “Oh my God! Your parents did that too?”
I’m no dope, readers. I can put two and two together, and with a little effort, come up with a four—or a really low five. I called my dad and confronted him directly.
“The black spots,” I said. “On the tongue. Where did that come from?”
My dad laughed jovially.
“Oh that,” he said. “I have no idea. I just said it one day, and your mom heard it. She started laughing so hard that she had to leave the room. After that, we did it all the time. She did it more than me.”
I was not overly amused.
“Listen,” I said. “Do you realize that when you did that, I used to go and LOOK for the spots? Do you realize that sometimes I thought I SAW them, and then I would question my own grasp of truthfulness? Because of your little joke, your four year old daughter spent a lot of time wrestling with the full meaning of honesty and the state of her soul?”
My dad started laughing so hard that he had to set the phone down for a minute.
I chose to confront them, but they did not care.
I started thinking back a little more about things that were just considered “givens” in my house. Here was another one: I wasn’t allowed to say that I hated anyone. There was no human being, I was told, who deserved to be hated.
On the surface, this is a very good rule, and one I applaud. But, it had a weird rider, like one of those laws they try to get through Congress with a strange little sentence attached. I wasn’t allowed to say I hated anyone . . . except Hitler. It was perfectly acceptable to hate Hitler. So, if I was angry, I would often shout, “I HATE HITLER!”
Now, maybe this is something that would have been normal in, say, London, during 1941, at the height of the Blitz. And hating Hitler really is the little black dress of hatreds—you can’t go wrong taking a swing at him. Coming out of a small child in Philadelphia in the late 70s, though, it was a bit odd. I hated Hitler when my toys broke. I hated Hitler when I had to go to bed early. I was doing an awful lot of Hitler-hating.
Here’s another one: we couldn’t sing at the table. No explanation was ever given on this one. It was just a very big deal. If you even started to sing, which I sometimes did, it was stopped, immediately.
I don’t for a second think I am alone. I am certain your parents made up some rule or fake tradition just to mess with your head too. That is what parents are for. I invite you to share them.
In the meantime, I am getting back to work. My editor, Emma Lollipop, reads this blog. She will know I have been taking time off from the book . . . and obviously the black spot thing has ruined me in terms of lying to her about it.
Just two things before I go.
1. The book is also about a show, in particular, a very carnival-like production of Hamlet—so I want to pimp some of my friends who are currently doing great theater work.
If you have ever wondered how musicals are made, you should read this blog. My friend Andrew is an amazing composer who has written a first-class musical called Meet John Doe, which is being put on at the Ford Theater in Washington D.C. (Yes, the theater where President Lincoln was shot.) His blog will show you what it’s like to take a musical from casting to set design to rewriting to performance. Also, he includes many hot photos of model stages and hats.
Also, my friend “Broadway” Joey (my baseball coach for The Key to the Golden Firebird) is in the hit show The Drowsy Chaperone. If you are planning on coming up to get some Broadway action, this is the show for you.
2. I do not normally show pictures of underwear on this blog, but I have to make a special exception for these . . . which are also very much on my birthday wish list. Come on. How great are these?
I am extremely pleased to report that Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld have finally returned to these shores. Justine, being Australian and not having seen snow until the age of 26, is currently traumatized by the actual cold weather we have here in New York. We met for lunch in our usual spot to celebrate this wondrous occasion. They brought along fellow Australian author Melina Marchetta, who had to leave a bit early to go to the airport. It was an excellent time, even if Justine shivered throughout and looked at my gloves as if she had never seen these magical bodiless hand-creatures before.
The lunch was so excellent, in fact, that we barely even noticed when an entire television film crew rolled up five feet behind us (and eventually around us) and filmed some Food Network segment with Mario Batali and one of the Sex in the City women. (I have never seen an episode of Sex in the City all the way through, but I can at least spot at Sex in the Cityite in the wild. Also, Justine told me who she was.)
The three of us were astonished to find ourselves surrounded by cameras.
After that, we all snuck up on writing partner John Green, who was deep in the terminal throes of finishing the very last sentences of the first draft of his new book. In general, I do not advocate sneaking up on John Green. I have painted him in the past as a man on the edge. But he took it well, greeted everyone with joy, and got himself a sensibly-pointed, Weight Watchers friendly lunch. I pointed this out, and he confirmed it.
“Five points,” he said proudly.
“Wait,” Justine said. “You really are on Weight Watchers? I thought that was a lie that Maureen made up for her blog.”
“Lie?” I said. “Me? I don’t even know the meaning of the word. I am a creature of pure truth. When I blog about this, you will see. Every detail will be recorded with pinpoint accuracy.”
“Okay,” I admitted. “Those two instances were what I like to think of as truth explorations. John is an artist. He is capable of great swings of emotion.”
John nodded away and ate his low calorie lunch with gusto. But Justine was not done.
I glanced over at Scott. He gave me a lightening-fast shake of the head and made a quick slit-throat gesture. Then he put his sunglasses back on.
“Well,” I said quickly. “Of course THAT didn’t happen! But that post was otherwise brimming with facts. I said that you don’t like chocolate and that Scott doesn’t wear jeans. You can’t deny that those things are true.”
“Be that as it may,” she said. “Sometimes, you tell stories.”
Reader, she is right. Sometimes I do. But everything I tell you is based in a deep, essential truthiness. And it was only those three times. Justine was astonished to find that my account of what authors do all day was actually the real deal, right down to the low fat cream cheese in John’s pants . . . in his pants.
And I’m certainly telling you the truth when I say that John Green and I are currently in similar boats. We are both finishing up first drafts. He’s done now, but I am not.
In a past entry, I described the process of finishing up a book in its very final stages, when the deadline is well and truly upon you, and the curtain is coming down. Maybe I should tell you a bit more about the other end, the part that is . . . as one of my most beloved theater instructors would have said . . . very loosey-goosey.
Maybe you imagine that writers sit down and start with the first sentence, and then keep writing away, until they finally type the words THE END. And maybe some do. But that’s not how it goes with me.
I may start with the beginning, but I may start with the middle. I may write a page, and then think of a sentence I want to write somewhere down the line, so I write that sentence, knowing someday I will catch up to it.
It’s like I’m building a house out of Legos—really, really small legos. Like, those single prong ones. But I don’t necessarily start with the ground and build up, carefully creating the base of my Lego house, leaving spots for the windows and the door. I often start with the windows. I hang things in mid-air. I build the roof. I put single Legos in where I think the bedroom will be. Sometimes I begin work on the pool in the back. Sometimes I build an entire LEGO CITY this way.
The result is that absolutely no one can read my drafts until they are complete, because they are literally masses of single paragraphs and sentences connected by the invisible ink that is in my head. And that’s fine by me, because I don’t usually want anyone reading at that stage.
I spend a lot of the first draft thinking about what the second draft will look like, because the two usually have little to do with each other. In draft two, I am Lego Godzilla, stomping all over the place and ripping things out with my squarish Lego claws.
Me.
But what I have right now is still Lego City. I happen to love this particular Lego City, and I have been working on it assiduously. I think this may be the best Lego City yet. But it is too soon for me to talk about it in depth.
But . . . what this has done is get me behind on letting you know about the newest members of my PIRATE DANCE CAMP CREW. I posed a challenge to my crew members to come up with some ways of getting the Girl At Sea message to the world. They didn’t let me down.
I am happy to introduce challenge winner Thea, now First Mate Katfish Kate, who is working on a short jellyfish-themed video about Girl At Sea. This won my heart, because I am terrified of jellyfish, and this fear of mine plays out in the book. I cannot wait to see this.
Also, an entire mini-crew form the second place Pirates Too. They include: Pirate Mandy Too Diefor, Pirate Miley Too Divine, Pirate Faith Too Dangerous, and Pirate Juliette Too Delicious. They are working on a plan so secret that it cannot be revealed here.
To all who entered, the ideas were all excellent. And there is a lot of time between now and the release of Girl At Sea, which means a lot of time left for more scheming.
Until then, I return, in all truthfulness, to work. Really.
