 Fitzgerald began planning his third novel in June 1922, but it was interrupted by production of his play, "The Vegetable", in the summer and fall.The play failed miserably, and Fitzgerald worked that winter on magazine stories struggling to pay his debt caused by the production.The stories were, in his words, "all trash and it nearly broke my heart," although included among those stories was "Winter Dreams," which Fitzgerald later described as "a sort of first draft of the Gatsby idea."