Before The Great Gatsby: Vintage Quotes and Wisdom From F Scott Fitzgerald
At Writer’s Digest, one of my favorite things to do is to go spelunking in the magazine archives. First published in 1920 as Successful Writing, WD has been around for 92 years, which gives a motivated nerd a lot of thrills in digging around when he’s not editing, writing or having mini panic attacks about production deadlines.
(Your Moment of Friday Writing Zen)
Fitzgerald! Hemingway! “Writing for the talkies!” Bradbury! Photo-plays! Kerouac! King! Capote! (Vintage exclamation points!)
At Writer’s Digest, one of my favorite things to do is to go spelunking in the magazine archives. WD has been around for 92 years (since it was first published as "Successful Writing") which gives a motivated nerd a lot of thrills in digging around when he’s not editing, writing or having mini panic attacks about production deadlines.
The finds: Legendary writers with decades-old advice that’s still evergreen (think quotes from Great Gatsby scribe F. Scott Fitzgerald, et al.). Novel strategies. Charming letters to the editor. Delightfully outdated advertisements. Quirky and humorous odds and ends galore.
I'll be posting some of my favorites here every Friday in a new series.
Since this is the debut post, here's a smattering of clips from our first year, 1920-1921, featuring wisdom from Fitzgerald and others.
Enjoy. And good luck on your photo-plays.
(Also, anyone who remembers my writing prompt blog, Promptly, might recall me talking about my health being endangered by the towering stacks of books on my desk—new titles sent to us by publishers, authors and so on. After reviewing the books, I used to do giveaways—and once again, the stacks tower. Thus, we’ll pick one commenter at random every week to win a book. There are novels, instructional writing titles, biographies, etc.—I’ll email the winner the list, and he or she can just choose whatever strikes his/her fancy.)
Letters From F. Scott Fitzgerald, pre-Great Gatsby
"Be Sure to Get a Copy of This Big Number"
Quote of the month from young scribe F. Scott Fitzgerald: "I wear brown soft hats in winter, Panamas in summer, loathe dress suits and never wear one, and prefer people with greenish-gray eyes." And: "I'd rather watch a good shimmy dance …"
Write about Cogley's ducks! (Anyone need a writing prompt?)
Notice: Aged Author Soon to Wed
“Eminent Author Declares That a Writer Who Declines to Use Motion Pictures is Like a Business Man Who Ignores the Telegraph and Telephone”
An article (with apologies for the cropping/size) that still rings true: “Have Faith: Have faith in your ability to write, and above all have faith in your stories. There are some stories which I write which I don’t care much about after they are finished, and I am not surprised if they don’t sell. But the majority of them I believe in, and even though they are knocked by the editors, laughed at by my friends, who are firmly convinced that they know a good story when they see one, I keep them going. There was an item in one of the magazines some time ago of an author whose story sold on the 200th submission. It had been going the rounds for seven years, and he had paid out over fifty dollars in postage. When asked why he had kept it going so long, he said simply, ‘I believed it was a good story.’ He had faith in it and faith won.”
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Want more from the archives? Check out our January 2012 issue (The Novelist’s Survival Kit), which features “Tried & True: Timeless Novel Advice” from the likes of Stephen King and 22 others. And for 90 tips from our 90-year retrospective in 2010, click here.
Zachary Petit is a freelance journalist and editor, and a lifelong literary and design nerd. He's also a former senior managing editor of Writer’s Digest magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ZacharyPetit.
