“You Might Know Me From Such Films as, ‘I Can’t Sing, But Neither Can You.”

POLL: Awesome book title?

Hors D’œuvres From Chaos

This is the next-next-next book! Next title will be 26 words long, I think. Yes, I do think I am Goddam Fiona Apple, thanks for asking. Next-next is untitled, and I hope will be a picture book starring everyone’s favorite petty criminal and deadbeat dad. No, not HIM. I said “FAVORITE.”

I confess to you now: writing is this thing that I can’t stop doing, even though half the time I feel like my chest is going to cave in or my brain is going to pop or something. I write well sometimes, and terribly often, and I put it all away and do nothing with it and get told off by opinionated people for losing the discs or letting a computer die without a backup. Part of me doesn’t care what happens to it; part of me cares so much I can’t stand to see it ever again.

Can I make that meet in the middle and cough something up? A few years ago I put together a pilot and pitch with some people for television. Hardly anyone saw it, but I think it was a step in the right direction. I did not die from someone else reading my work. It is a funny thing to love something so much and yet feel such anxiety around it.

17 thoughts on ““You Might Know Me From Such Films as, ‘I Can’t Sing, But Neither Can You.”

  1. I would like to sign up as an opinionated person, if that means I get to tell you off for LOSING TEH WRITINGS.

  2. It is a funny thing to love something so much and yet feel such anxiety around it.

    Say something half that perceptive forty times, and you’ll get a book deal just like Kanye. First, of course, one must be Kanye, but you’re ASSHOLE! What more could they ask for?

  3. In one way it astonishes me that a writer of your calibre feels anxiety about it. And it gives me a small amount of hope about my own paralysing anxieties. I can scarcely bear to have someone read my comment on a blog, let alone have an actual blog of my own or (perish the thought) write and have read an actual whole screenplay. So a big bucket o’ respect to you SJ. And as an admirer of your work, am a little sad that some of your work has died a digital death, but you know, don’t want to be opinionated about it. Nice book title. For a novel? Poetry? Non-fiction?

  4. YES bloody brilliant title!
    I can completely understand the anxiety… maybe the more something means to you the more of a freak you feel about it? But to be honest, if I could write like you I would walk around all day just purring, safe in the knowledge I can write like a mofo… PURRRRRRRRR… PURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

  5. Heh, Shauna, you are totally MY inspiration. Okay, yes, I guess this is a close as I can come to an announcement. I will be done in December. I will let you all know what is happening, I PROMISE.

    Thanks, Jane. I think Hors D’œuvres From Chaos needs to be an essay collection.

  6. You know, I’m TRYING. Two years ago P. called me the most private person he knows and I live with him. Recently someone told me that the word on the street at the girls’ old school was that I had split from him and was now living as a Full-Blown Lesbian and that was the cause or something. I think the rumors are more interesting than my real life.

  7. “word on the street at the girls’ old school was that I had split from him and was now living as a Full-Blown Lesbian”

    Don’t tease me like that. It’s just cruel. :)

  8. I would totally kill to edit a book by you someday. Full of energy, funny and smart, but lots of people are that. You have style – you don’t cut your words to fit – you go way out there in what you put together and it makes people’s heads expand. Fuck me but that’s rare!! You don’t grind yourself down, well, I’m sure you fucking do but you don’t grind yourself ALL THE WAY DOWN like obscene cosmetic surgery or some kind of how-to-manual of obedience for writers. Thanks! Thanks for not sucking! Thanks for being shiny!

  9. Whoa, thanks, Liz. <3 By “kill” I hope you mean “murdering someone in lieu of payment.” Har har, I jest. OR DO I?

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