Remedie for Love, by Michael Drayton
Since to obtaine thee, nothing will me sted,
I have a Med'cine that shall cure my Love,
The powder of her Heart dry'd, when she is dead,
That Gold nor Honour ne'r had pow'r to move;
Mix'd with her Teares, that ne'r her true-Love crost,
Nor at Fifteene ne'r long'd to be a Bride,
Boyl'd with her sighes, in giving up the Ghost,
That for her late deceased Husband dy'd;
Into the same then let a Woman breathe,
That being chid, did never word replie,
With one thrice-marry'd's Pray'rs, that did bequeath
A Legacie to stale Virginitie.
If this Receit have not the pow'r to winne me,
Little Ile say, but thinke the Devill's in me.
I found it at breakfast this morning in an anthology of sixteenth-century verse, while waiting on Jessica to arrive. It made me happy. Lol.
So, since I've last posted, I attended the Sewanee Writers' Conference, worked for the rest of the summer, moved in to Humphreys for my senior year, and attended my grandparents' (Gram and Pop's) 50th anniversary party. Things I have learned:
1. Drunken writers are a really fun crowd.
2. Being a secretary, while okay for a summer job, is not a career I would ever choose.
3. Living in a suite with five of one's sorority sisters is probably the best thing ever.
4. Being a senior is scary.
5. If I can find a man I want to stay with for fifty years, my life will be pretty much set.
Also, I've found a new hobby - quilting. I'm working on making one for my grandmother (Mama Gail, not the 50th anniversary grandmother, though her 50th is coming up in December) for Christmas, because last Christmas she gave me a sewing machine and requested that I make her something pretty. So, I'm making a quilt. I cut out all the pieces this past weekend while I was home, but I can't work on it while I'm at school because I didn't bring back my sewing machine, or, indeed, the pieces. So I'll piece it all together the next time I'm home, hopefully, and then I can bring it back here to quilt whenever I've got time because I'm going to quilt it by hand. I'm also thinking about making a Shakespeare quilt - more info on that later.
You may have noticed, thus far, the lack of mention of the Baby Reaper story. That's because I'm mad at it. I had fully intended on finishing it by September 26th, thus taking a year to write it. A pretty little circle, isn't it? Unfortunately, I took it to Conference and then it changed. Big time. So I'm reworking a good portion of what I've already written and completely redoing the beginning (and a lot else besides.) I still could've had it finished by September 26th, had I written about 2500 words a day (assuming my goal was 100,000 words) but... I didn't. It wasn't coming along as fast as I wanted it to, and, being the perfectionist that I am, I had to have everything reasonably good before I could move on to a new scene. So, as it stands, I have a collection of jumbled scenes in no particular order that I need to piece together. Were that all, and the scenes, once together, made up a novel, I'd be okay with it. But, no. They might make a quarter of the novel as I see it now. So, I've set myself a new goal. I'm going to have the damn thing finished by Christmas. That's the end of it. If I don't have a complete draft by then I think I might just explode.
This new determination has been working, off and on, to force me to write a bit every day. It might just be a sentence or two, given my bent toward procrastination, but it's at the very least in my mind. So I'm pulling together what little self-discipline I have and putting together what should be the first 20 or so pages by Friday. Shouldn't be too extremely hard, since I am reusing a bit of what I had before, but the beginning is a lot of new material too. I've told Kevin to be really horrid to me if I don't turn in 20 pages by Friday; whether he is or not remains to be seen.
The picture accompanying this post doesn't really have a lot to do with the content... I'm just really amused by it.
