The Spinster Diaries
Happily Ever After Is Overrated
Our heroine, a moderately successful TV writer in L.A., wants her life to be as sunny and perfect as a Hollywood rom-com: a cool job, a wacky best friend, and lots of age-appropriate hot guys just dying to date her. Instead, she’s a self-described spinster who is swimming in anxiety and just might have a tiny little brain tumor. So she turns to an unlikely source for inspiration: the eighteenth-century novelist and diarist Frances Burney, who pretty much invented the chick-lit novel.
A semi-autobiographical unromantic comedy, The Spinster Diaries is a laugh-out-loud satire of both the TV business and the well-worn conventions of chick lit—as well as the true tale of the forgotten writer who inspired Jane Austen to greatness. It’s an endearing and refreshingly honest testament to how one person’s life can reach out across the centuries to touch another’s.
“An utter delight from start to finish, Gina Fattore’s debut is one of those rarities—a comic novel that is actually laugh-out-loud funny. The Spinster Diaries is a heartfelt, hilarious, and addictively un-put-downable story of anxiety, ambition, and love (or learning to live without it) in twenty-first-century L.A. and eighteenth-century Britain.”
“So you have this book about a semi-alienated (okay almost completely alienated), perpetually unmarried Hollywood TV writer adrift in a world of L.A. lunacy and blondes in zillion-dollar shoes. Throw in the fact that she spends her idle moments obsessing about an eighteenth-century novelist whose heroines are actually a lot less interesting than she is. Throw in a brain tumor. Mix and splatter. What you have is a woman you root for who makes Bridget Jones seem like a boring cow and a book that makes you laugh and, well, not cry exactly, because she is resilient, decent as hell, and whip-smart, and it is such a special pleasure to watch her find her unique way of being in a world that doesn’t deserve her. Sign me up for the Gina Fattore fan club. I adore her.”
“Witty, whip-smart and winning, Gina Fattore’s Spinster Diaries is a sheer delight. In her tale of an anxious TV writer who turns to the lessons gleaned from her favorite writer—eighteenth-century novelist Fanny Burney—to navigate a health scare and ensuing existential crisis, Fattore expertly carries us from droll humor to incisive cultural critique, from lively comedy to utter poignancy.”
“Wouldn’t it be cool if ‘Gina Fattore’ was really the pseudonym I chose for my prose writing, and it was actually me who wrote this funny, emotional, expertly crafted novel, and it was me whose witty and original voice was so fresh and captivating? Well, a guy can dream.”
“If you need a laugh and want to support indie publishing during this time of uncertainty, this is the book for you.”
“Gina Fattore writes like the voice of your best friend in your head—that ideal friend whose unflagging support, self-effacing humor, painful honesty, easy rhythm, and bravery in all things great and small you want to turn to in times of distress. This is a rare and tricky feat only accomplished by the wittiest of writers. She also gets Hollywood exactly right. She sweats the small stuff hilariously, and gracefully handles the big stuff like the witty adult in the room. And the rooms she’s been in contain a serious shortage of adults. Like Carrie Fisher, Fattore is funny as hell and in love with words and curious things; she’s the quiet voice at the dinner party that you realize is also the smartest and funniest right around the time dessert appears. Once I realized she wasn’t going to write about me in The Spinster Diaries, I relaxed and really enjoyed it. But I then got disappointed that I wasn’t being subjected to her kind and ruthless gaze. Maybe in the sequel.”
“I go on, occasionally, with my Tragedy. It does not much enliven, but it soothes me.”
—Frances Burney, letter to her sister, April 1790
Friday, January 13, 2006
Found out today that I have a brain tumor. Which was upsetting. But not nearly as upsetting as losing my car at the Beverly Center. You know that feeling, right? That totally lost feeling where you’re wandering in circles around an unjust universe thinking…
SELF (V.O.) But this is exactly where I left it.
It’s clear you have a problem: no car. But on the sliding scale of human misery, how high does this really rate, this lost car at the Beverly Center? Higher than a hangnail, lower than a brain tumor. Or is it? The brain tumor, after all, is benign and—for the moment—seemingly asymptomatic, whereas the lost car….
The lost car is a logistical nightmare begging a wide variety of deep philosophical questions. How long should I look before I accept that it’s gone? An hour? Two? And once I’ve crossed that bridge—once I’ve accepted the very real possibility that my silver Volkswagen Beetle convertible might actually have been stolen from the fourth floor of the Beverly Center while I was inside attempting to return an ill-fitting corduroy jacket to a Gap that no longer exists—whom exactly do I call? The police? My insurance company? A significant other? What if you have no significant other? What if you’re wandering around the Beverly Center parking garage on Friday the 13th with a brain tumor, a lost car, and a bright-red corduroy jacket you never should have bought in the first place, when right then and there, in that exact instant, you have the should-be-life-changing realization that all the others in your life are, for the most part, largely insignificant? What then?
Keep looking?
Give up?
Put on the bright-red corduroy jacket for added warmth?
It’s not like it does any good to panic in situations like these. Or, wait, maybe it does. Panicking is always an option—although it tends to play better on female leads who are younger than thirty-seven and thinner than a size fourteen. If nothing else, it’s cathartic. Tears. A few sobs. Maybe that’s what I need right now? A catharsis of some sort? In a Hollywood romantic comedy like the one I’m currently trying to write, panicking would totally do the trick and might even attract the attention of a blandly handsome, age-appropriate single guy, thereby leading directly to eighty-eight minutes of banter and some kind of real estate–based happy ending.
Yes, that could totally work.
In a romantic comedy, the scene where the heroine wanders around the Beverly Center parking garage in a desperate search for her lost car could wind up being the Meet Cute.
Or the Point of No Return.
Or possibly even the Climactic Moment of Character Growth.
Here is what happens in real life…
A little old lady barely tall enough to see over the steering wheel of the car she only takes out on weekends slows to a crawl, rolls down her window, and shouts to me across the chasm of her empty passenger seat…
LITTLE OLD LADY Oh, honey, did you lose your car?
Pity. From the elderly. I suppose that’s as good a place to start as any.
***
Okay, false alarm. It was on the third floor. Not the fourth. Crisis averted. Now that I’m safely tucked back home in the Miracle Mile, I can see that going to the nearest available mall wasn’t necessarily the best way to cope with bizarre, anxiety-producing medical news. Call a friend? That’s something people do, right? I have some friends, sure, but if I were to call one of them and tell them I have a brain tumor, I’m not exactly sure how that would help the situation. I mean, once I got past the part where the tumor is benign (it’s not really a brain tumor; I’m going to be fine etc. etc.), then I’d just be stuck making small talk about meetings both canceled and taken and creating vague plans to get together that will never be fulfilled because, you know…traffic, work.
No, I think the important thing right now is just to remain calm. Remaining calm has always worked super well for me in the past. Because, really, let’s get serious here for a second. My situation? Not that dire. True, I am a single, unemployed, thirty-seven-year-old television writer with a tiny little brain tumor pressing on my frontal lobe. But, again, it’s not like I have cancer or an actual disease or anything—that’s in the pro column. And being unemployed is pretty normal for a TV writer. We’re all unemployed some of the time—like landscapers in cold climates. Being single…pro or con? I’m not really sure. I’m one of those dyed-in-the-wool perennially single types who’s never been any other way except single, so I have no basis for comparison. Married ladies, is it better over there on the other side? Fancy dishes, tax breaks? Is all that stuff helpful when you have a brain tumor, or does it just create a lot of extra domestic chores you have to deal with?
That romantic comedy screenplay I just started writing? That’s definitely in the pro column. If I play my cards right, it could help me rocket my career to the next level—where I suddenly become A-list, get invited to tons of cool parties, and start hanging out with famous people. As opposed to the level I’m at now: where I’m either making good money working on a show that is about to be canceled, or making no money developing my own ridiculously impractical ideas that are set in the eighteenth century. At the moment, I’ve got three whole pages of my new screenplay written, and I have to say I’m very excited about all three of them.
Or, you know, at least the first two.
The pages I wrote before my ridiculously suave, Omar Sharif–like ear, nose, and throat doctor called and told me I have a small brain tumor pressing on my frontal lobe? Those two definitely rock. They’re clear, concise, funny—totally not set in the eighteenth century—and completely consistent with all the rules set forth in Rules for Romantic Comedy, the trusty how-to-write-a-screenplay book I just picked up at the Beverly Center, along with Journaling for Anxiety™ and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris. Seriously, who can resist those buy-two-get-one-free stickers? Margaret Hale Newman, PhD, is the author of the trusty screenwriting guide, and although I’ve never met her, heard of her, or read any screenplays she’s written, based on the parts I skimmed while standing in the aisle at Border’s, I feel like the two of us are going to get along just fine. Without even trying, I seem to have fulfilled her first and biggest commandment.…
Establish a sympathetic, likable heroine and her everyday life.
Check. I’ve totally done that with my heroine. She’s a middle-school teacher in the Chicago suburbs who wears baggy sweaters constantly—you know, sorta like Sandra Bullock in While You Were Sleeping, except really she’s based on my friend Kitten. Screenplay-wise, I’m definitely off to a good start—no question about that—but in dealing with my health crisis, I seem to have floundered. They’re really not calling me back, are they? The brain surgeon’s office? While I was wandering around lost at the Beverly Center, it seemed totally possible that they might call me back, that I’d be able to build a little forward momentum, set up an appointment or something, but now it’s after 6 on Friday, and—oh shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
I just realized something…three-day weekend.
Martin Luther King Day.
Ugh. Now it’s pointless to hope, right? No way is any sort of trained medical professional calling me back before Tuesday at 9 a.m. Till then it’s just me and Google, doing our best not to panic, fear the worst, have negative thoughts, contemplate our mortality, etc. Thankfully, if you Google “meningioma”—the tumor-substitute word my ridiculously suave ENT kept using on the phone earlier today—the word “benign” comes up a lot. Benign means good. Gracious. Kindly. Or, according to the OED online, when specifically related to diseases, “Of a mild type, not malignant.”
Mild. What I’ve got here is a mild case of brain tumor. And the more I think about it, there’s no possible way this can end badly, because the whole thing began—only three short weeks ago—almost exactly like Hannah and Her Sisters. I can’t tell you how much this bathes me in relief. My tumor—like my screenplay—has a genre. And that genre is romantic comedy.