Thinking of throwing in the Towel on Screnzy.

[capri0mni]

I didn't even start writing until the 11th. I didn't write anything at all on the 13th, or yesterday, and I haven't written a single word at all (yet) today.

...It just feels like homework, instead of play (I did not intend to pun, but it's rather hard-wired into the language, at this point).

I dunno. I might be coming down with a bout of depression. Not real deep, or life-threatening. Just "meh," about everything.


Since this is National Poetry Month, and I have a Fake!Will in my icon, I'll give his twenty-ninth sonnet. I've read some critiques of this poem that said the expression of melancholy here was a simply a literary convention of the time. But when I look at it, I see what is now a "textbook case" of clinical depression (or it would be, if they'd had textbooks about it, back then). And some biographers believe, that even if the poems weren't published until later, that he first wrote the early ones around the time that his son died. Anyway, here you go:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

---

"Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,/With what I most enjoy contented least"

Hey, kids! Even Shakespeare had writer's block, and was his own worst critic!

Just some food for thought.

---

...I may check out the rules and regulations for "Short scripts," to see how (and if) they'll count more than one script toward the single 100-page total. If I can have a bunch of different stories, and move on to something else when I get bored or stuck, I may be able to find some inspiration again... maybe..

[ETA: Answer from the Official Screnzy Staff:

this may change; the actual details of verification have yet to be released. However, it is a safe bet to say that you will simply combine all your various scripts into one file, and submit them together. The validator won't know the difference

So, that's good... I guess. I can always do any old, random odd scene that comes into my head, now, and keep going until something sticks... or just keep going randomly.]

Comments

[gordon-r-d.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Kept meaning to respond to previous posts but never got round to it. I think the most important bit up there is the bit about it feeling like work if it's not fun then you should go and do something that is</> fun and not worry too much about the other thing if possibe. *nods*

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Kept meaning to respond to previous posts but never got round to it.

Same here. ...Been thinking good thoughts about & at you, though...

~sends more~

[elfycat.livejournal.com]

I too, am thinking of giving up on this years frenzy. I've restarted 3 times, and still have no inspiration, plus being in the middle of finals at the university.

Seems like this has been a rough one. My coworker dropped out, my sister just barely quit, and unless I write a ton inbetween when I finish my school projects and the end of April, well, it just isn't happening.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I think part of it was/is that I was all gearing up for it to be in June, and I got caught by surprise when it turned up in April, instead. ...All because they wanted it to be in a month that school kids could join in on.

Which is fine, since they are making themselves into an educational type org, and all.

But why does it have to be that and in a thirty-day month? What's wrong with thirty-one days, huh? Huh?! Or Twenty-Eight?

There are twelve months in a year. Only four of those have thirty days.

So why is thirty the default number for "one month"?

Me no likey.

Maybe I'll be more inspired next year...

[pedanther]

Speaking of Shakespeare, I just found this podcast of Germaine Greer mounting a spirited defense of Anne Hathaway:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/features/extended_interviews.htm

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm on dialup, so I may download to listen to it later...

But I didn't realize that Anne Hathaway was ever under attack. ...At least not in commentary that I've read on her -- usually, she's the suffering wife spurned, left at home on the farm to be a single mother while Will the cad goes galivanting about the country in his fancy theater life.

[pedanther]

Come to think of it, it's at least partly a defense of Will as well. :)

But the version Greer's up in arms about is slanted differently, suggesting that it must have been Anne's fault Will ran off, because she wasn't a good enough wife and he probably never really loved her anyway, so there.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Well, anyone who thinks that has never read Shakespeare's work very carefully, if at all. In his early plays, the women are just there to be plot devices for the men, and their motivations; by the end of his career, the women are often the most astute and morally courageous characters onstage.

IMNSHO, he could not have written these characters so well, if he didn't respect the women in his own life so deeply.