"The Novelist Laments in Verse"

Dec. 15th, 2025 06:24 pm
swan_tower: (*writing)
[personal profile] swan_tower
A screencap of a sonnet titled "The Novelist Laments in Verse" by Marie Brennan:Shall I compare me to a wrung-out rag?I am more limp, more grimy, and more drained.The labor of a novel makes me sag;my fervor for this enterprise has waned.Sometimes -- ofttimes -- I’ve craved a restful week,in which no scenes or chapters I compose,no useful details in my reading seek:but sans those things, a novel never grows.So my eternal labor must go on,in word by word and day by tiresome day,until the moment when, quite pale and wan,I can, arm raised in feeblest triumph, say:I may be brain-dead and completely beat,but after all these months, my book’s complete.

(I have finished a draft of The Worst Monk in Omnu, just in time to kick back for the holidays!)
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Date: 2025-12-16 04:41 am (UTC)
st_arcadia: pink geometric rose silhouette on a cream background (Default)
From: [personal profile] st_arcadia
Congrats!!!! Very excited and patiently looking forward to it next year 😌 and the crowning poem/lament is the best—“I may be brain-dead and completely beat/but after all these months, my book’s complete.” !!!!!!

Date: 2025-12-16 05:46 pm (UTC)
kass: Mal Reynolds has read a poem; try not to faint. (mal-poem)
From: [personal profile] kass
Huzzah, book's complete!

Date: 2025-12-16 08:50 pm (UTC)
isis: (awesome)
From: [personal profile] isis
Yay, congrats!
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