Locking Yourself Away to Focus On Making Money as Quickly as
Possible A trove of F. Scott Fitzgerald's tax returns recently
surfaced, and they contained a host of surprises, as this
article in The American Scholar notes. The piece is full of
delicious details about the ups and downs of his financial life.
But veteran writers may especially appreciate this passage about
how even such a prominent writer and relative money-making
machine as Fitzgerald occasionally had to focus on factory-like
productivity of material that, to him at least, was more about
commercial than artistic success. By November, Fitzgerald was
out of cash—including Scribner’s $3,939 advance for Gatsby. The
wolf was at the door. For the next five weeks he went to a large
bare room over the garage and worked 12 hours a day “to rise
from abject poverty back into the middle class.” Between
November 1923 and April 1924 he produced 11 short stories,
earning $17,000. Some of the early stories have lasted—“May
Day,” “The Ice Palace,” “The Diamond a