*screams*

I am officially nervous.

Why?

My Shakespeare paper is due today. I've finished it, proofread it three times, checked for MLA format, and had two other people proofread it. I'm still nervous. Getting caught up in the grade is about the last thing I want to do, but I really, really want an A on this. It took a long time. It's 2100 words (about 8 pages, double-spaced). And darn it, I know the material, I could compare The Merchant of Venice and The Jew of Malta (Christopher Marlowe) in my sleep now, so give me the freaking A!

Sorry, just had to get that out. I'd consider posting it, but I'm not sure how many people actually want to read all eight pages. Nine if you count Works Cited.

And the other *scream* is for my cell phone, currently locked in my coach's office. I was bright enough to leave it in her office. When I went back after class (for which the teacher didn't show, so twenty minutes later we left), there was a notice on her door stating she'd be out of the office for most of the day. Fortunately, I know her phone number (or at least I'm pretty sure of it). Unfortunately, I'm trying to find a phone to call her with. *sighs*

Clouds are mounting in the sky, and as I walked back from class, I saw a beautiful bolt of lightning. It makes me think of this passage from The Aeneid:

"As thunder
at times will split the sky and a trail of fire goes
rippling through the clouds, flashing, blinding light-"

Lovely, isn't it? I've enjoyed The Aeneid more than The Iliad, partly because it's half the length, and because Virgil wrote in Latin meter, not Greek. In The Iliad, there are a lot of double modifiers - the great blue sky, the black swirling death - you know, a bunch of adjectives. No-nos for modern English writers. So that drove me nuts. Virgil isn't prone to that.

I picked up a lovely little volume of Robert Tristam Coffin poetry a couple weeks ago at the library. It hadn't been checked out since February 24, 1984. It's a shame, too, because it's beautiful poetry - the images are amazing, but it's not super-cryptic stuff. I'll post a poem next time, perhaps...

The Realm of Fiction, and Its Forbidding Doors

Read this first.

(Isn't it amazing that even on a bad day Q can write something so good?)

This is an inevitable part of writing. All writers know that. Or if they don't, clearly they have been given the golden key to the gates of the realm of fiction. Writer's block - I might start calling it writer's lock-out - is something that drives me beserk. I've been suffering it since school started...such a long time.

Maybe it was burnout. With two weeks before I moved out, I realized once I got to school the odds of me finishing my current project anytime soon were slim. So in the last two weeks of summer, I charged through to the end of the book. It was a great feeling, no writer's block.

And then it hit. Seven weeks of painful nothingness in the mind, except for phantoms of ideas too insubstantial to hold.

There's a glimmer of hope, though: one of the phantoms is solidifying a little. As much work as Shakespeare class is, I now have inspiration. From which play? Romeo and Juliet. Not at all what I expected. For years I've hated that play. I came to terms with it last week: every problem I have with it deals with the time span. They fall in love overnight? They get married the next day? They kill themselves a day later? Uh-uh.

But then I grudgingly admit that spreading these events over a long time period wouldn't work for a play. Shakespeare had to condense. So when I read R&J, I just imagine there are tidy gaps of time between acts. If I think of it that way, I quite enjoy it.

So yes, my idea, flickering at the edges of my mind, is somewhat based on Romeo and Juliet. But modern. And with a somewhat happier ending. (Not a Disney ending, mind you, not at all. I may not be friends with Will, but c'mon - a happy ending in something based on one of his tragedies? It's an insult.)

I just realized something. The three projects I've finished have something in common. Or the process leading to them did: I wrote rough outlines for all three. Unfinished projects, I didn't.

Yes! Perhaps this is a breakthrough. I must go now - and finish my pesky paper on The Merchant of Venice so I can try to outline this idea...I hope it will not fail me.