I think the lack of names works in this case, as does the third person. The detachment of third person is meant to keep the ambiguity of the relationship. Comma placement continues to be a plaguing problem. My grammar is terrible. I think one major problem is that it originally was a 600-or-so word flash fic that felt completely off for the fandom since the characters in the fanfiction only had a nodding acquaintance with their real counterparts. It makes me feel uncertain about the whole thing.

Anybody willing to go over it? Or even if out of bored interest, wants to read it.

The semi-incestuous story and the rest of the portfolio was turned in today. Seven page essay, a 2591 word short story, my reading journal, my writing exercises, everything. I have one more class (a different one) and only just to turn in my final project. After that I should be a graduate! I really hope I don’t flub this up somehow, I keep getting worried.

I’m thinking of going into IT. I love writing scripts. I think with some schooling I might be worth employing. Perhaps. It’s a big leap for me since I keep going back and forth. Half a year I’d decided on it. A month later I’d decided against it again. I think it would be the best choice for me, though. The medical field is for my family, it’s not for me. I’d be rubbish at being a respiratory therapist. I don’t have steady hands so being a surgical tech would be a disaster. I feel that I should do what I love. I am worried that I will come to hate doing what I love because it becomes a job but I have to take that chance.

I need to edit ten pages of poetry for my final project. Not quite sure what I should do with them. I’m afraid they’re not good enough. I know they’re not good. Really, only a three to four page essay left to do. I can manage that in six days, right?

My semi-incestuous story is about 2580 words. Imagine that from the paltry less than a thousand it started at. It feels more complete, more story like. I’m pleased with it though I still feel it’s not the best it could be. I was talking with a classmate and her story also started off as fanfiction. I was pleasantly surprised and pleased. Since my original fanfiction had a rather OOC Peter Pevensie it was fairly easy to make him an original character. I’m glad I kept the archery aspect, archery is always something I’ve been fascinated with.

I won a ‘free domain’ from the Name Cheap contest over at Twitter. I have my eye on one, maybe if I win again I will get it (it’s a .nu). That would mean mean I have five domains. Yikes!

New smilies for this blog and I also have started reviewing some movies since I’ve been catching movies in theaters lately. Once it’s on DVD I rarely, if ever, watch anything. It’s terrible but I can’t concentrate and I don’t really have a DVD player hooked up to my screen (I use a flat screen TV as my computer screen).

Stressed. Graduation is so close I can almost taste it. Good news is that unless I royally fuck things up I should pass my classes. Also, my books have started arriving!

We workshopped the semi-incestuous story last week and it got a pretty good reception. I also got some help from another individual online – desperately need to reply to that! I think that will be the story I want to revise first and foremost. I think it needs more work than the other story even though the ending is leaps and bounds better.

I desperately want to buy books. I’m nearly done with the stack of books I bought last spring and I know I could get good deals on them on the Internet. Shipping killed me last time and doubled the price tag. However, I will probably hold off until after Christmas. I want to read more Jeanette Winterson, I want to read Lolita, I want to read Cloudstreet, I want to read more poetry. I’ve moved away from poetry and that makes me sad.

I’ve been thinking on expanding what I call the semi-incestuous story. I turned it in for workshopping but I wonder if it needs more of an ending, a high point to what really isn’t action filled. It was orginally a piece of fanfiction until I realized even though some details were right the characters were nothing like their counterparts in the original work. I did rewrite the last scene almost completely, added more clarification and small scenes, and did some edits. It feels incomplete, though. I just don’t know what to do with it or if I should just dump it in an unused folder on my computer and forget about it after it’s workshopped. The details and interactions feel right, the plot – or lack of it – don’t.

Forgetting about old writing is almost a hobby of mine. I put the writing away, come across it months or years later, and marvel at how terrible it is. I rarely find it within me to take a fresh approach to it. I think that’s a bad sign.

“Punishment” by Seamus Heaney is gorgeous.

I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
of her neck, the wind
on her naked front.

It blows her nipples
to amber beads,
it shakes the frail rigging
of her ribs.

I can see her drowned
body in the bog,
the weighing stone,
the floating rods and boughs.

Under which at first
she was a barked sapling
that is dug up
oak-bone, brain-firkin:

her shaved head
like a stubble of black corn,
her blindfold a soiled bandage,
her noose a ring

to store
the memories of love.
Little adultress,
before they punished you

you were flaxen-haired,
undernourished, and your
tar-black face was beautiful.
My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur

of your brain’s exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles’ webbing
and all your numbered bones:

I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,

who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.

To be able to write something like that! I tried writing a poem based off the general idea but I don’t think it was successful. I’d never heard of people being killed in the bog or the later issue with the IRA – the shearing of the hair and so on – that prompted this poem. Very powerful.

I still love The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. Sexually frustrated middle-aged man wanting a different life. What’s not to love? I especially think this part works effectively:

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]

The collar mounting firmly to the chin and asserted by the simple pin are not the best parts of the poem but my attention was called to them recently and, guh, they’re great.