"...And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." -Sylvia Plath

I'm currently working on a project about Sylvia Plath, and I feel like this is very true. For example, I recently started writing a short story and got 15 pages into it, then started to think those thoughts that are devastating to writers: "This isn't really good; No one would want to read this; What's the matter with me? I can't write."


I guess the point of this entry is really to point out to you (and to myself) that nothing is preventing you from writing a good poem, interesting book, or compelling short story. If writing is what you are passionate about, then you can't second-guess yourself too much. Think if F. Scott Fitzgerald had written half of the Great Gatsby, only to read over it and think that it was too romantic, the language too poetic... it is one thing to correct your own writing and to push to make it better. It is another thing entirely to give up.

Gatsby House in the News

The house that some say inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald to write "The Great Gatsby" is doomed. It's slated to be razed and its property parceled up into new developments.

The once-grand home called Lands End has fallen into disrepair. But back in the day, the 25-room, 20,000-square-foot Colonial Revival mansion was home to parties attended by Winston Churchill, the Marx brothers, Dorothy Parker and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. According to local lore, Fitzgerald drank there too, Newsday reports.

The home was built in 1902 and came to be owned by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope, one of the first recipients of the Pulitzer Prize and editor of the New York World. It was Swope's parties that Fitzgerald was said to have attended. The history of the house -- and its legendary influence on Fitzgerald -- was reported by Forbes when the house was for sale in 2005.

Located on 13 acres in Sands Point, N.Y.,  on Long Island Sound, the property has a private beach, a grand pool and wide patio (where, according to legend, Fitzgerald was spotted.) In January, Sands Point Village approved plans to raze the house and divide the property into lots for five custom homes, to be sold for $10 million each.

When the house was sold in the mid-2000s, it still had, according to the New York Times, "banana-yellow laminate countertops in the kitchen... neon flower-power 1970's-style carpeting in some of the bedrooms" and other design offenses that called for a full renovation.

Seems to me that an inspired eye could make that work -- although it would have to be an inspired eye with deep pockets -- upkeep was said to be $5,000 a day.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

"So we beat on..."

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
-The Great Gatsby

This is the quote that is on F. Scott Fitzgerald's grave.

I'm sorry, it has been too long!

I do have a good excuse as to why I have not posted for about two months. My computer decided to make Google and Blogger die. Google owns Blogger, so for some reason, both sites were not working. Knock on wood, they are working again for the first time in a long time, and on my birthday, too! It's a birthday miracle.

I am now about halfway through re-reading the Great Gatsby again, so hopefully I will post more soon! Of course, only if my internet decides to behave.

Ciao (I'm sorry, I can't resist. I had an Italian mid-term today)